By Thuy Vu
Warning: The video below contains profanity and some graphic images.
Last week's videotaped brawl between San Francisco police officers and residents of the Valencia Gardens public housing complex is sparking a lot more questions than answers. What happened exactly in the critical moments before the altercation, none of which is captured on camera?
Police say that when plainclothes officers tried to detain 20-year-old D’Paris Williams for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk near his home in the Mission District neighborhood last Friday, Williams wouldn’t stop. Officers confronted him as he tried to flee into his apartment, police say, and the situation escalated when he tried to resist arrest. The video above, and a second one posted this week, shows what happened after the incident began.
Here's how the San Francisco Chronicle described the arrest later:
“It escalated to a point where (Williams) was trying to resist arrest,” said Officer Gordon Shyy, a department spokesman. The officers “proned him out on the ground, and he still continued to struggle.”
Williams’ sister, Christina Williams, 21, said officers beat her brother needlessly outside their front door.
“He was just coming in the house,” she said in an interview Monday. “And they want to say they’re coming after him for riding a bike on the sidewalk. He had to bring the bike on the sidewalk to come into the house.”
Police say five officers were injured in the brawl, which led to a total of four arrests. Those detained included a man who was shoved and punched by a plainclothes officer. The community responded with a Tuesday night protest of the incident.
The Valencia Gardens episode is the latest in a growing string of incidents, including the BART police killing of Oscar Grant and last month's widely publicized confrontation between New Mexico police officers and a family of six, in which video is playing a crucial role in showing police conduct to a global public. In the Grant case, numerous bystanders recorded the confrontation leading to the fatal shooting. In the New Mexico event, police video showed details of a wild altercation that led to shots fired and the arrest of a mother and her 14-year-old son.