A video is making rounds on social media and it shows a police officer from Decauter, Alabama, who punched, tackled, and handcuffed a black store owner after he called the authorities because his shop was robbed.
Wrong suspect
The surveillance video was from an incident that happened on March 15 at the shop named Star Spirits & Beverages.
It circulated on Twitter and Facebook over the weekend and on June 8, the Decauter Police Department released the body camera footage from the three police officers that responded to the scene.
Nate Allen, the police chief of Decauter Police Department said the reason why they released the body camera footage is that they want to be transparent.
The video that was released by the police department showed the three officers enter the store of Kevin Penn, a 47-year-old black man who owns the store. The police officers can be seen yelling at Penn and according to the police, they were demanidng him to put his hands in the air. The video goes into slow-motion and it shows Penn's gun in the counter right next to him.
However, the surveillance video went further and it showed one of the police officers punch Penn in the face, and all three officers jumped on him to handcuff him. Allen said that Penn refused to put his gun down when he was asked to by the police officers.
Penn's lawyer told AL.com that he was trying to tell the three police officers that he was armed and the store owner removed the bullet from the gun to show the officers that he was disarming himself.
According to the report written by Officer J. Rippen, Penn refused to obey lawful commands to put down and back away from a firearm while the three officers were attempting to investigate a robbery in the area. Because of the incident, Penn suffered a broken jaw and he had several of his teeth knocked out.
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Penn has been charged with obstruction of government operations and Allen said on June 8 that the department policy requires officers to use the least amount of force to get their job done. Allen said during a press conference that he'd rather have a punch than a shooting.
Since an investigation over the incident is ongoing, the officer who punched Penn has been placed on desk duty. The real suspect of the robbery was later caught and charged with shoplifting.
Racial profiling
It is no secret that the police force in the United States has been racially profiling African Americans for years. They are also notorious in using unnecessary force on the black community even on the most minor of offenses.
This was proven when George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was accused of paying a convenience store a counterfeit $20 bill, was killed by a police officer from Minneapolis by kneeling on his neck for almost 9 minutes even after he repeatedly begged to be set free because he can't breathe.
The kind of tactics used by the police towards black people and the senseless killings that have happened for years, without any consequences on the police's end, is what sparked the protest that has been going on for 2 weeks now since Floyd's death on May 25.
Thousands of protesters are seeking justice for the killings of hundreds of African Americans and they are also asking lawmakers to defund the police.
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