The arrest on a New York City sidewalk was so startling to a bystander that he took a video of it. And when he posted the video online with the label “Police Brutality,” some viewers denounced the officers’ tactic as disturbing and inhumane.

The video showed a man lying on the ground, his ankles and legs bound in bright orange tape, both hands secured behind his back. Four to five officers searched the pockets of his pants and jacket. They then lifted him up, dropped him onto a white bag, strapped him in and covered his head. He was carried, wrapped up like a mummy with only his feet poking out, and deposited — alive — against a wall.

“I’ve never in my entire life seen anything like this,” said the unidentified man videotaping the arrest near a subway stop at 14th Street and Seventh Avenue earlier this year.

But the scene was not that unusual, and coming amid national scrutiny of the authorities’ use of force and protests after episodes like the death of Eric Garner, who was put in a chokehold by an officer and died in police custody on Staten Island, there is no evidence that the officers involved in the arrest in Manhattan violated police policy.