Marcel Hammer was walking home from school with some friends around 3:30pm back on June 4. According to his attorney, a plainsclothes cop jumped out of a van accusing Hammer of smoking marijuana. Hammer was smoking a cigarette. When the video begins, Hammer is lying in the gutter, between a car and the curb, with the police officer over him.
A video of the incident picks up with Hamer lying in the gutter, pleading with the officer to lay off as the cop holds him by the right hand, which according to Hamer’s account in medical records is handcuffed. The undercover orders, “Turn around.”
“Mister, it was just a cigarette, sir,” Hamer says, without rolling over.
Teens, apparently friends of Hamer’s, hover nearby and the officer turns to one, still holding Hamer, and threatens him.
“Do you wanna get f----- up?” the cop says.
The moment of the apparent knockout blow is partially obscured in the footage, but the officer appears to punch Hamer in the face with his left hand, prompting protests from Hamer’s friends.
“Yo, you wiling!” one teen says to the officer.
“Yeah, get it on film,” the cop retorts.
The officer then repeats his order for Hamer to “turn around,” but Hamer is lying completely prone.
Another plainclothes cop shows up to help at this point.
According to Hammer's attorney:
“It is pervasive now, throughout the department,” said Hamer’s attorney, William Thompson, a former state Supreme Court judge. “It is indicative of an attitude in the police department that is, ‘Them against us. Let’s do whatever we want.’”
Regardless of what you think of guilt or innocence of people being harassed and assualted by police officers around this nation, the real issue is that there must be a better way for these things to unfold. There is really no reason why these incidents should escalate the way they do.