Warning: This video of the arrest contains explicit language.

A former St. Paul Central High School student was taken into custody Wednesday after being asked to leave the campus several times, school officials said, but the force used to arrest him has drawn criticism on social media.

The teen’s arrest was captured on a cellphone video and posted to Facebook. In the video, the teen is heard yelling for help as a school resource officer pushes him against a wall and knees him in the back after taking him to the ground. The videographer said the officer sprayed a chemical irritant in the teen’s face, and the teen is later heard complaining that he was “Maced.”

The incident happened during the last class period of the day, according to Nelson Moroukian, the 18-year-old Central senior who posted the video. By 8 a.m. Thursday, the video had been viewed nearly 206,000 times and shared 5,200 times.

Moroukian said principal Mary Mackbee called him after he posted the video and told him the teen was trespassing, that officer Bill Kraus had been searching for him for an hour and that he was not cooperating with the officer.

St. Paul police said the arrest was under review.

Whatever the circumstances, Moroukian said, the teen didn’t appear to be resisting arrest and didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

“I still feel like the officer behaved appallingly,” he said. “That’s not the right way to treat anybody, especially a student, and especially when you are a police officer at a school.”

Black Lives Matter St. Paul said the teen “was absolutely brutalized,” while Rashad Turner, one of the organization’s leaders, said the video shows that police need to do better at de-escalating such situations. In a Facebook post, Turner said the organization would stage a protest at Central at 2 p.m. Thursday.

Toya Stewart Downey, spokeswoman for St. Paul Public Schools, said the teen had been enrolled at Central but transferred to a school outside the district during this school year. He was in the building for about an hour Wednesday before school staff realized he wasn’t supposed to be there, she said.

“He was asked to leave several times and didn’t,” she said.

Stewart Downey had no comment as to whether the officer used appropriate force.

“That’s for the police to address,” she said.

Police spokesman Sgt. Mike Ernster said it was too soon to judge whether the officer acted appropriately without knowing the circumstances that led to the teen’s arrest.

“No officer ever wants to use force, but in a case like this, when a person fails to do what an officer is asking, an officer is forced to respond to their resistance,” Ernster said. “Officers use force for their safety, the safety of the person in question and for the safety of other people in the immediate area. In this case, that includes students, staff and the people at the school who did not want this person in the building.”

Ernster said the case will be reviewed and a determination will be made about whether the use of force was appropriate.