Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday decried a newly surfaced video that shows a CPD officer bodyslamming a man to the ground as “very disturbing.”
In a series of tweets, Lightfoot said she expects the investigation into the police use of force will be “comprehensive and expedited so that the public may gain a complete picture of what happened.”
“While a single video does not depict the entirety of the interactions between the police and the individual, this particular video is very disturbing,” the mayor tweeted.
Shortly before 4 p.m. on Thursday, Chicago police officers saw a 29-year-old man drinking alcohol at a bus stop in the 700 block of East 79th Street and approached him, according to police.
Police said the man became “irate” and licked the face of an officer and verbally threatened the officers. When the man spit in an officer’s eye and mouth, the officer performed an “emergency takedown,” police said.
A 41-second video of the incident that was posted to social media appeared to show the man facing a police SUV with an officer standing behind him when the officer picks him up off his feet and throws him to the ground. The man appears to lie motionless in the street as other officers gather around him.
Police said charges were pending Friday against the 29-year-old.
While a single video does not depict the entirety of the interactions between the police and the individual, this particular video is very disturbing.
— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) November 29, 2019
Jovanna Alexiss Jamison, 22, witnessed the incident and recorded the video that was posted to Facebook.
The man “didn’t do anything aggressive, he just stood there,” Jamison said. “He was standing there using his cellphone. They took away his bottle of liquor and threw it.”
The man was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center by police, where he was stabilized, according to spokesmen for the CPD and the Chicago Fire Department.
The 32-year-old officer who was spit on was taken by ambulance to the same hospital for evaluation, officials said.
The officer’s actions will be investigated by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
“This incident is under investigation as the actions in the video are concerning,” Guglielmi said in a statement Thursday night. “If wrongdoing is discovered, officers will be held accountable.”
