A video posted Tuesday depicts a shocking scene: A man appears to urinate on the face of another sleeping on the sidewalk outside the Eaton Centre while an off-camera crowd laughs and cheers.

The video, hosted on the website World Star Hip Hop, received more than 100,000 views on its first day. It’s unclear when it was recorded.

The video begins with a man sleeping on the ground in front of the mall at Yonge and Dundas Sts.

Another man approaches and appears to deliberately urinate on his head. Bystanders can be heard laughing in the background.

The man on the ground does not wake up for the duration of the 27-second video.

Nobody intervenes. One other man, all but his finger off screen, points and exclaims, “It’s on his head,” laughing.

Toronto police have opened an investigation into the incident.

“Obviously when someone is urinating on someone, that’s an assault,” said spokesman Const. Tony Vella.

Street pastor Doug Johnson Hatlem said while the video is shocking, attacks on people sleeping on the street are not unusual.

“I think most of our friends who sleep outdoors have some sort of story of being attacked, kicked at, spat upon, hit by a nightstick, something like that while they were sleeping,” said Hatlem, who does outreach to the homeless.

World Star Hip Hop has been involved in controversy on Toronto’s streets before. Last year, a video was posted of three girls as young as 15 attacking an older woman.

Christopher Schneider, a sociology professor at the University of British Columbia and expert in crime and media, said video sites like World Star Hip Hop may offer a larger audience for miscreants, but open the door wider for criticism.

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