The police in Charlotte, N.C., have started an internal investigation after a video was shared on social media showing an officer repeatedly punching a woman while other officers restrained her on the ground.
In the video, taken on Monday, several officers are seen restraining a prone woman. One of them strikes her repeatedly with downward blows. After a moment, the woman is seen being taken to a police car.
Bystanders can be heard objecting to the officers’ actions. Anything said by the police or the woman cannot be heard.
The police said in a statement on Tuesday that a man and a woman had been smoking marijuana in public and were approached by officers. The woman punched an officer in the face, the police said. The police also said the man had a 9-millimeter handgun.
During the moments captured on video, the woman was “laying on her hands and not allowing officers to arrest her,” the police statement said.
“After several repeated verbal commands, an officer struck the female subject seven times with knee strikes and 10 closed fist strikes,” to the thigh “to try to gain compliance,” the statement said.
The names of the man and woman were not released. A lawyer for them could not be found.
The violent arrest drew an objection from the Charlotte Mecklenburg NAACP. The woman in the Charlotte video is Black, and most of the officers appear to be white.
“There are marks on her face, and I want to know how those marks got there, who struck her and how many times was she struck,” the group’s president, Corine Mack, told WCNC Charlotte.
She likened it to the murder of George Floyd, the Black man who was killed by the police during his arrest in Minneapolis in 2020, a case that spurred widespread protests against police brutality.
The chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Johnny Jennings, put out a detailed statement on social media.
“I had an opportunity to view the video, and it is not easy to watch,” Chief Jennings said.
“When individuals physically assault officers and refuse to comply with police, and when they resist arrest,” he said, “officers must physically engage with them to safely take them into custody.”
He added: “I watched the body-worn camera footage and believe that it tells more of the story than what is circulating on social media.” He said that he could not release that footage without a court order but that he had asked for one.
Both the man and woman were employees at a nearby Bojangles restaurant, the company said in a statement sent to news organizations.
