‘Police brutality’ is tagged to a video circulating the Chinese Internet today. The footage shows a police officer throwing a woman – who is holding a baby – to the ground.
Filmed on a sidewalk near a police car, the video starts with an officer negotiating with a middle-aged woman holding an infant. There is some finger-pointing and, at one point, the officer tells the woman to “please cooperate.”
A few seconds later, the woman begins pushing the officer. She manages to get three shoves in before being taken down and subdued by the policeman, who is aided by another officer who emerges from the squad car.
In the process of pushing the woman to the ground, the policeman knocks the baby out of the woman’s arms. The child appears to hit the pavement hard.
The incident occurred at 10.30am today on Juidu Lu, in Shanghai’s Songjiang District. According to the Songjiang Public Security Bureau, the officers involved in the now-viral video were targeting illegally parked cars, one of which was owned by the woman in the video.
According to Beijing News, the officers involved in the take-down have been suspended from duty, and both the woman and the baby have been hospitalized.
Understandably, the video has caused considerable backlash from netizens, with one writing on Weibo:
“The baby is innocent and when it fell the two cops didn’t even look. Do they deserve to be ‘the people’s police’?”
You can watch the footage below, viewer discretion is advised (VPN off):
And the aftermath…(VPN off)
[Image via Beijing New Media]
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