5 May 2011
A police officer is being investigated after a horrific video surfaced on YouTube of him fiercely pushing over a 15-year-old girl against a wall and to the ground.
The teenager appears to pose no threat at all to cop Patrick Larrison, but is seen walking away from an incident scene when he suddenly runs up and violently slams her to the floor in Phoenix, Arizona.
The video shows Officer Larrison running after the allegedly drunk teenager after she was kicked out of her school. She is walking slowly before being taken out, handcuffed and led away.
The girl was allegedly being removed from school on January 25 because she assaulted a male teacher and her mother, with police believing she had been drinking.
She was reportedly serving alcohol out of a water bottle to other students and was belligerent and drunk, a police spokesman said.
She was allegedly in a dispute with her mother in a car park and the two of them are seen on the floor for some time in the video, but the girl managed to get free.
That’s until a police officer responding to the scene near Ombudsman Charter School runs at her from behind and knocks her onto the ground.
She was taken into custody on suspicion of aggravated assault and had no injuries.
The video, uploaded in March, was found online by a police employee on Tuesday who showed it to a supervisor. The department said it was ‘greatly concerned’ by the incident.
Police have begun a criminal and internal investigation into the six-year veteran officer’s actions and he has been placed on administrative leave immediately.
‘At face value, all you see (in the video) is the force that is used to effect this arrest,’ the police spokesman told the Tuscon Citizen.
‘And at face value that certainly appears (that) it is outside of the boundaries of what we would consider to be reasonable.
‘Obviously we don’t like the video out there, and don’t want this to be the image of us within the community.’
Officer Larrison has no history of force or use of force incidents with the department’s professional standards bureau, the spokesman said.
‘It is surprising to us this incident was not brought forward to us (earlier),’ he added.
Source: