“PLEASE! STOP! PLEASE STOP HITTING ME! OH PLEASE! DON’T HIT ME NO MORE!”
Garth Kiser, along with his girlfriend, Sarah Handyside, began filming the incident from their apartment. They say police hit the man at least 20 times. They say he was handcuffed.
From their interview with the Times Picayune:
Six police vehicles eventually arrived, they said. And at one point, the couple claim, officers positioned the man in the street and a police vehicle sped up beside the man, its door swinging open and slamming into the man’s body.
“He kept yelling, ‘Please don’t hit me anymore,’ ” said Handyside, who is 26. “But they kept hitting him in the back of the head. They beat the hell out of that guy. You could hear the hits.”
The beating lasted five minutes and the man was placed in the back of a police car, the couple said.
The officers gathered around and chatted. Kiser said an officer yelled into the car minutes later: “You want another five minutes?”
“Then they stood in a circle and had a casual conversation, like they were at a bar, like they were in high school,” Kiser said. “We were surprised at the language they were using.”
Kiser put the video on his computer and wrote about the incident on his Web log. Kiser said he had not filed a formal complaint with police because he thought it ineffective to complain about the police to the police.
The couple said they don’t know the officers, nor the suspect, but felt the beating they witnessed was way out of bounds.
“They were unprofessional, swearing every other word, taunting the guy,” Kiser said, adding that some officers mocked the man’s screams.
The following is from Kiser’s “Web log” post (and we wonder why the media still doesn’t get the blogosphere):
A glance out the window reveals an altercation between two men, with one obviously having the upper hand, dragging the screamer backwards by the neck. Eyes adjust to the darkness, to the fact that the upper hand is in uniform.
Police cars fly in from every direction, like angry bees, at least six of them. Enraged, muscled men, most appearing Caucasian, jump out running, eager to deliver blows to their scrawny black suspect. One disgraceful uniform props the beaten man up while others take turns pummeling the back and sides of the head.
So orderly of a beating…..looks so……routine.
The little man continues to scream his pleas between punches, moans deeply when receiving them. He’s drug into the center of Roman Street as yet another police car slowly approaches, ominously.
“GET UP!” the cop holding the suspect yells.
Now sobbing between continued screams, “NO, PLEASE STOP HITTING ME. PLEASE”.
According to the Times Picayune:
The man arrested at that intersection at that time is Leroy Allen, 26, a New Orleans resident who complained to jail employees that he had been beaten. The NOPD’s report says Allen ran when police approached him, then pointed a gun and tried to fire at officers during the chase.
He was booked early Saturday with attempted first-degree murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm, illegal carrying of a weapon and resisting arrest. Later that day, a magistrate judge ordered Allen, who has a prior conviction for cocaine possession, held in lieu of $273,500 bail.
When he was booked into jail, Allen told the sheriff’s deputy working the receiving area that he had been kicked and hit in the mouth with a closed fist by the arresting officer, according to the remarks noted at the bottom of the arrest register filed in magistrate court.
