A popular YouTuber got a first hand glimpse at the police state Saturday night in a heavily populated bar area in Austin when he recorded a man having his cellphone snatched and thrown to the ground before being pepper sprayed by police.
William Tucker Boner, known on YouTube as a character he portrays named Jericho, was visiting Texas from California when he became part of a crowd that had gathered watching Austin police roughly detain a man. The situation surrounding the arrest is currently unclear, but the video captured quite a story in itself.
“All we saw was someone get tackled by a single police officer (he looked a bit young to be drinking) and then this. Make your own judgement. Sorry for the language.” Tucker wrote in the caption for the video.
In the video, we see police surrounding a man on the ground, as officers on horseback ride around doing crowd control. An officer who is not on horseback begins pointing his pepper spray at the crowd, many who are recording.
Several officers ride past, until one snatches the phone from the hand of man who was recording the incident. She is seen throwing the phone on the ground as the witness is immediately assaulted with pepper spray by another officer for simply reaching for his phone back.
“Look, I am not one to call brutality. This guy probably was in the wrong. It was handled horribly and should have been 100% different.” Tucker tweeted about the incident.
Another YouTuber, who goes by Goldy on Twitter, also reported being kicked by a police horse.
By 4 a.m. EST, the video was already going viral and Tucker demonetized the video and asked for others to re-upload it, stating that he only hopes to start a discussion and does not want to make money off it. He says he turned down offers to buy it from several mainstream news outlets, and began calling out others who refused to use it unless they could buy it and watermark it.
It is 100% legal to record the police as long as you are not interfering with an investigation.
Nevertheless, Austin police told local media they are “investigating” the incident to determine if the officer complied with departmental policy.
