A video on social media depicting several police officers beating a 20-year old woman on a New Jersey beach while holding her down has gone viral, being viewed over two million times today. Despite repeatedly hitting her in the head, the officers decided the woman, a minor, who was at the beach with her 18-month old child and boyfriend, assaulted them. According to the NY Post, the officers charged Emily Weinman with two counts of aggravated assault on an officer, and being a minor in possession of alcohol.
In her Facebook post, which has since been removed, Weinman admits there was alcohol around her, but makes clear she didn’t have any. Despite that, she took a breathalyzer test, which she says she passed. But even then, police would not leave her alone.
“They still stayed, the one cop following me when I walked away to go make a phone call after they did what they had to do,” Weinman wrote on Facebook. “Therefore I asked them don’t they have something better to do as cops than to stop people for underage drinking on the beach, saying to that there’s so much more serious stuff going on… the cop said, ‘I was gonna let you go but now I’ll write you up’ and he asked my name.”
Weinman says she was so afraid of the officers she refused to give them her name, saying she had done nothing wrong, and had already acquiesced to their demands.
The officers “have been taken off the street pending a probe into their actions, officials said Sunday,” according to The Post. The paper says the “54-second video clip posted online shows one of the cops punching Weinman in the head, then flipping her over with his forearm across her neck before she was subdued with the help of another cop.”
One of the officers can be seen holding her down by her ankles while the other officer beats her.
Wildwood, New Jersey Police Chief Regalbuto “stated that while he finds this video to be alarming, he does not want to rush to any judgement until having the final results of the investigation,” the Dept. wrote on Facebook.