Video shows unarmed teenager forced to ground by group of Stockton police officers after allegedly walking in a bus lane

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Nine police officers arrested an unarmed black teenager in California after he allegedly jaywalked and then scuffled with an officer.



A video of the incident shows the officers surrounding the 16-year-old African American and forcing him to the ground after he got into an altercation with an officer who accused him of walking in a bus-only lane.

The incident happened in the city of Stockton, 80 miles (130km) east of San Francisco, on Wednesday morning. A cellphone video uploaded to Facebook and YouTube by a passerby has been viewed more than 10,000 times.

It shows an officer using his baton to push and hold the boy, wearing shorts, on a landscaped perimeter on the sidewalk.

They scuffle, the boy yelling “get the fuck off me” and the officer shouting “stop resisting arrest”. The officer strikes him in the face and orders him to the ground but the boy does not comply.

An unseen female bystander shouts in protest: “That’s a fucking kid! Don’t touch him, leave him alone! That’s a kid. Are you serious? He didn’t do nothing wrong.”

The officer retrieves from the ground what appears to be a body camera knocked off during the scuffle.

Several patrol cars arrive and four officers force the boy to the ground, handcuff him and march him to a car while colleagues mill around them. The protester’s voice rises in anger and disbelief: “That is a child! That is child that was jaywalking! That’s a fucking child! What’s wrong with y’all?”

YouTube user Edward Avendaño posted the video under the username Stockton Port City. In a Facebook post he said the officer tried to stop the teenager for jaywalking and ordered him to sit but the teen kept walking to his bus.

“The cop kept grabbing his arm & the kid took off the cop’s hand off his arm so the cop took out his baton & that’s when I started recording because everything happened too quick. He didn’t have to hit the kid with the baton & no need to call about 20 cops.”

Joseph Silva, a spokesman for Stockton’s police department, told the Guardian the first officer had seen the teen walking in a bus lane near the city’s transit center.

The teen “cussed” when ordered onto the sidewalk “for safety reasons”, said Silva. “These things wouldn’t happen if people followed officers’ lawful instructions.”

The teenager was held in custody and released to his mother pending a charge in juvenile court with resisting arrest and trespassing.

It appeared that the officers acted within policy but the incident was under review because any use of force triggers an automatic administrative review, said Silva. The boy’s family has filed a complaint, he added.