Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The policeman could be heard shouting "stop resisting"

Police in California are investigating after a video posted online showed a group of officers tackling a teenager for jaywalking.

Edgar Avendano, who filmed the incident, said the teen was walking in the road on Tuesday when he was stopped by a police officer.

A Stockton police spokesman said the boy refused to leave the road and the situation escalated into a scuffle.

"He didn't do nothing wrong," a bystander yells in the video.

Stockton Police Spokesman Joseph Silva told VICE News that the boy reached for the initial officer's baton, which triggered the aggressive response. The officer's body camera was knocked to the ground.

In the video, the white officer hits the boy in the face with a baton and the teenager, who is black, is later seen sobbing.

The officer then attempts to arrest the boy and is joined by a large group of fellow officers, who push the teenager to the ground.

"He didn't have to hit the kid with the baton, [and there was] no need to call about 20 cops," Mr Avendano wrote in a post on Facebook.

Image copyright Edgar Avendano Image caption The boy was initially stopped for walking in the road

The 16-year-old boy was later given a citation and released. His name was not disclosed.

Several high profiles cases, including the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer, have sparked protests in the US and a national debate about racial bias and the use of force by police.

"Anytime an officer uses force there's an automatic administrative review," Stockton Police Spokesman Joseph Silva told VICE News.

However he said: "the preliminary investigation is showing that the officers were within our policy".