A state trooper who was recorded on a cellphone video that appears to show him blasting a protester with pepper spray earlier this month was placed on restricted duty yesterday pending an internal investigation, a state police spokesman said.

“On Tuesday, the State Police placed the trooper depicted in the video on restricted duty pending completion of a department investigation,” sate police spokesman David Procopio said in a statement. “The name of the trooper is not being released while the internal investigation is underway.”

Kin Moy, 24, told the Herald that he and some friends joined hundreds of others who were protesting the killings of unarmed black men by police in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y on Dec. 4. Around 9:30 p.m., they made their way onto the Interstate 93 on-ramp near South Station, he said.

“We saw a bunch of officers start dog-piling this guy who was not resisting arrest and it seemed to me to be a little rough,” Moy said. “I wanted to film all of it just in case, and as I was backing up and complying with his demands but still trying to film everything, he sprayed me.”

Moy later posted the video to YouTube. It has since been viewed more than 15,000 times.

“I don’t think that all cops are bad. I just think that there are too many that are getting away with things that they ought not to be without facing repercussions and that’s what these protests were all about for me,” Moy said. “Ironically enough, I felt that the officer who pepper sprayed me was being an example of that.”

In the 39-second video, a state trooper confronts Moy, yelling “Go, now, you’re going to get sprayed.”

The trooper appears to hold a canister and spray Moy three times before the Cambridge man turns the camera on himself, showing an orange liquid across the side of his face.

In a statement released tonight, Procopio noted that repeated attempts to contact Moy, including sending “two Internal Affairs investigators to try to speak to him at his residence as well as at a local gym” were unsuccessful, saying “Again we are asking the individual who posted the video to contact the Massachsuetts State Police so that the investigation of the matter can be thoroughly undertaken.”

Moy had said he is waiting to meet with American Civil Liberties Union lawyers before he speaks with the state police. He was expected to meet with ACLU staffers today.