SDPD discusses recent viral arrest video in Gaslamp

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A violent incident involving the San Diego Police Department motorcycle team was captured on video in the Gaslamp late Saturday night.

Before all this happened, police said they were responding to a fight at the corner of 5th Avenue and F Street.

When they got there, the police saw three men running away.

“As you can see in a video posted online, we ended up tracking a man wearing a white shirt and blue jeans,” said Captain Ryan Hallahan of the SDPD's Central Division.

The video does not show what happened beforehand, but you can see the officers attacking a man, knocking him to the ground, grabbing him, dragging him away and later handcuffing him.

ABC 10News asked Hallahan if, as captain of the Central Division, anything about the man's arrest seemed excessive to him.

“When you look at the camera and the way it looks, it's clear that the force used was to overcome the movement or non-movement,” Hallahan said.

“When he came down, there was a hand on his head, but according to BWC – body-owned cameras – at no point was there any pushing or hitting of the ground.”

The captain said that from other angles, videos from body-worn cameras show the man resisting.

At this time, the department has not yet released these videos.

Kevin LaChapelle is a former El Cajon police officer and criminal justice professor.

We asked him to watch the video again and in his opinion the number of police officers seemed a bit too high.

“If they believe the person might be armed, sometimes they'll attack with such force to kind of surprise them so they can get the situation under control before it escalates. But I think most reasonable people would look at that and say, 'Oh, that seems a little over the top,'” LaChapelle said.

The person who took the video did not want to be on camera, but tells us that the man seemed unaware of what was happening.

Police told ABC 10News they believe he did so.

After his arrest, a witness to the original fight could not identify him as a participant.

According to police, the man in the video was charged with obstructing and delaying an officer in the performance of his duty.

He was later released.

Hallahan said every time there is a video like this, they review it and everything else and make corrections as needed.

“If there is a black sheep in our organization, we want to identify the problem and fix it,” Hallahan said. “That is not the case with our cycling team.”