Is “Stop Resisting” a Warning from a Public Servant or a Precursor to Death by a Public Master? Corpus Christi Cops Repeatedly Punch a Black Man in the Face b/c He Resisted Their “Compliance Strikes”
/From [HERE] Cell phone video of an arrest by Corpus Christi Police officers is raising questions about excessive force. The video starts in the middle of an arrest of a Black man near the Wells Fargo ATM at the intersection of Airline Road and SPID.
Officers can be seen yelling at the man to "stop resisting" as at least two of the officers repeatedly punched the man in the face and body. 3NEWS counted at least 17 punches in the 49-second video.
"Why is he punching him in the face?"
You can also hear the reaction from the couple taking the video. At first they disagreed over whether the man was resisting. The woman said, "You are resisting, you fool," but then a few seconds later, the man watching with her said, "he's not resisting," and they grew quiet.
The punches continued, and the woman said, "That's excessive," and "why is he punching him in the f****** face?" The video then ends.
3NEWS asked if the man was combative at any point and tried to hit the officers. Lt. Gonzalez said she had not seen any of the body cam or dash cam footage. 3NEWS submitted a public records request for those videos.
Lt. Gonzalez did watch the cell phone video and said officers are allowed to punch suspects.
"We would call that a compliance strike," Lt. Gonzalez said. "There are a variety of different what we call compliance techniques that officers are trained in."
The couple believes the officers might need more training.
"There was obviously other ways they could have handled the situation," they said. "He wasn't hurting anybody at the time."
"The Corpus Christi Police Department is looking at the video, making sure that everything that the officers did is within policy and within their training."