Video posted to Facebook and Twitter over the weekend showed a police officer in Wildwood, N.J. punching a woman who appears to be much smaller than him.
NJ.com reported that the video shows the officer punching a woman in the head as people around her shout, “Stop resisting.” The video was recorded Saturday afternoon and by Sunday afternoon, it had been viewed on Facebook more than 140,000 times.
In her Facebook post, Emily Weinman explains that she decided to take her daughter to the beach. Weinman admits that alcohol was near her vicinity, and officers asked her to take a breathalyzer test, which she passed.
“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 writes. “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 that she refused to give him her name out of fear.
“I’m not gonna give him my information knowing I didn’t do anything wrong. He told me he’s arresting me and started coming towards me to put handcuffs on me,” she recalls. “I tripped and fell and the cop tackled me to the ground and smashed my head into the sand. At that point I blacked out and fought any way possible trying to get up and push him off me. Thats when he head locked me me by his arm around my neck, punched on me in my head and then he head locked me again but this time choking me.”
Weinman goes on to say that she would have given the officer her name “if I took even a sip.”
NJ.com asked Wildwood Commissioner Pete Byron for a comment on the case but he declined to respond.
Watch the video and read Weinman’s post below.
UPDATE: 6:33 PM EDT –
The video appears to have been removed from Facebook. Here is a copy via NBC Philadelphia:
Here’s a better copy: