Portsmouth, OH — An intense video uploaded to Facebook this week is beginning to go viral as it shows a Portsmouth police officer choking an EMT.
The video, which was taken Saturday night outside of a Portsmouth bar, shows what happens when a police officer has his authority questioned. Predictably, the police department is claiming that the video doesn’t show everything that happened. However, multiple eye-witnesses have come forward and have told their versions — they are all the same.
The video, like most videos, actually does not show 100 percent of what happened. However, according to those who watched the situation unfold, in person, there is no question as to what happened.
According to police and witnesses, a fight had broken out in front of a bar in downtown Portsmouth last Saturday night. Police and EMS responded and the EMT began treating a man who’d was bleeding and knocked unconscious.
While the EMT was prepping the man for a trip in the ambulance, the man regained consciousness and was naturally startled.
“He just woke up from being knocked out, and he’s got guys all around him grabbing a hold of him,” Trevor Conley, one of many witnesses said. “You’re going to freak out.”
Instead of calming the man down, as the EMT was trying to do, police rushed over and began tasering the man. At this point, acting out of concern for the man’s life, the EMT questioned the officer’s choice to taser a man who was bleeding and unconscious and tried to prevent it. However, he was swiftly met with police violence of his own.
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“The EMT said, ‘You can’t be tasing this guy, he’s bleeding, got head problems,’ ” Josh Journey, another witness said. “Then after that, he grabbed the EMT, took him across the street, and I saw him have his hand on his throat all the way across the road and had him up against that cruiser.”
“When the EMT was telling him ‘you can’t do that, you can’t do that, he’s got head trauma,’ he grabbed him up here,” Chad Bennett said, who also witnessed the incident first hand, as he gestured around his neck.
At this point, Journey says that’s when he started recording. Journey’s video is clear and shows the officer holding the EMT by his throat against the police cruiser — allegedly for the act of questioning his authority.
But this cop’s anger wasn’t over yet. After he attacked the EMT, he turned his attention to the people who just documented the attack.
“He saw us with our phones out,” Journey said. “That’s when he came across the street at us and was pretty hostile.”
In an apparent fit of rage, the officer verbally berates the witnesses and attempted to confiscate their phones. However, he was unsuccessful.
“I think they realized that they’d messed up,” Journey said.
“He could’ve handled it a little better,” Conley said. “I know the situation was crazy.”
According to the Portsmouth police chief, the case is under administrative review which is expected to be completed by Wednesday.
Oddly enough, this is not the first time we’ve reported on a cop choking an EMT.
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Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper Daniel Martin decided that it would be a good idea to pull over an ambulance for failing to yield to his squad car — never mind the fact that the ambulance had a sick woman in the back, bringing her to the hospital.
Martin became belligerent at the scene when the ambulance drivers wanted to continue on to the hospital and ended up assaulting and arresting driver Maurice White.
Charges were eventually dropped against White, and Martin went on an all expense paid, taxpayer funded vacation.
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