LAPD launches internal inquiry after video shows handcuffed man who appears to be unconscious
The Los Angeles Police Department launched an internal investigation after video surfaced showing a handcuffed young man who appears to be unconscious after officers detained him last weekend on the city’s Westside.
The footage, aired by KTTV Fox 11 on Tuesday, initially shows officers standing by two men whose hands are cuffed behind their backs. One of the two officers then moves one of the men — who identified himself to the television station as 20-year-old Taaj Williams — behind a wall.
The camera doesn’t capture what happens next. When Williams is next seen a few seconds later, on the other side of the wall, he is almost on the ground, face down. The officer, who is holding Williams’ cuffed hands, then drops him on the pavement. Williams is limp in the video.
“Did he just knock him out?” a voice says on the recording. “He just knocked him out.”
Later, video showed Williams on his feet, pressed against the hood of a police car as officers searched him.
Capt. Patricia Sandoval, an LAPD spokeswoman, said the department opened its internal inquiry after it became aware of the footage, shortly before it aired Tuesday. Investigators are interviewing witnesses and officers and reviewing video “to determine what did happen behind that wall,” she said.
Sandoval said officers responded to the area — near the 4400 block of Inglewood Boulevard in the Del Rey area of the city — Saturday after receiving multiple reports of two groups of people fighting. Officers detained the two men in the video because they thought the men might be involved, she said.
Neither were arrested, she added.
Williams told the television station that he and his friend were victims in the fight. An officer put his arm around Williams’ neck while he was handcuffed, Williams said, then “slammed me on my face.”
Williams had a black eye during the interview, which he said was from the officer’s actions.
His mother, Tyeesha McDonald, who can also be seen in the video, told the television station her son was unconscious for several minutes.
“I thought he was dead,” she said.
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