‘I started just delivering strikes’: Auburn releases body camera video of officer punching suspect

Auburn police have released body camera footage showing an officer punching a suspect repeatedly during a struggle in the middle of a busy street Wednesday afternoon.

The officer has been placed on administrative leave while the department investigates whether the use of force was justified.

Video shows Taser deployment followed by roughly 20 punches

The footage begins with the officer arriving at the scene on Auburn Way Wednesday afternoon, ordering the shirtless man to get on the ground and telling him he is under arrest.

“Hey, you’re under arrest. Get on the ground. Do it now. Get on the ground. Hey, you’re under arrest. It’s the Auburn Police. Should be audio and video recorded. Get on the ground. Get on the ground,” the officer could be heard saying on the video.

About 29 seconds into the recording, the officer shoots the man with his Taser and radios to dispatch, “Taser deployed.”

The officer radios dispatch that he used the Taser and says the man is on his stomach. The officer then straddles the man, sits on his back, and tries to pull his arms behind him to handcuff him. As the man twists onto his back and the struggle to handcuff him continues, the officer starts punching him.

At one point, the officer’s body camera falls off his uniform, limiting what it captures of the remainder of the encounter. However, the audio of the officer throwing punches can still be heard. Other cameras, including home cell phone video, show the punches.

It appears the officer threw around 20 total punches, which were thrown intermittently. Thirty-two seconds passed between the first and last punch. All of them seemed to connect with the suspect’s face or head.

Seconds later, other officers arrived, and it took four officers to handcuff the suspect.

Officer says suspect may have reached for his gun during struggle

In a later account of the incident to an Auburn police sergeant, the officer is heard on his body cam saying he initially saw the man in the roadway and became concerned he was approaching passing cars to commit a carjacking.

The officer said he used his Taser when the man continued moving toward the vehicles. He told investigators the man then pushed at his face and tried to grab his beard. The officer also said he believed the man may have reached for his gun or holster, although he acknowledged he was not certain.

“I approach him thinking he’s about to start doing a carjacking. He sees me, turns, and starts walking closer to the cars so I fry him,” the officer said. “At one point I felt him … I think he grabbed my gun. I’m not 100% sure. I think he tried to or did grab at least my holster, so I started just delivering strikes until he stopped.”

Officer discusses injured hands as footage captures suspect’s pleas

The officer also talked with another officer about his injured hands, including a cut on his right hand, which was bleeding.

“Do you want me to get anything for that?” asked the fellow officer.

“Can you roll my sleeves back up, so I at least look cool?” the officer involved in the incident responded. “My hands are going to be f*****… 100% … you see that one is swelling up pretty good and that one is bad too.”

During the entire incident, the suspect could be heard yelling over and over, “no,” “please,” and “I’m sorry.”

A bystander could also be heard yelling at the officer, presumably trying to get the officer to de-escalate, “he’s on drugs … he can’t understand you…”

The officer acknowledged hearing the bystander by telling a fellow officer, “Somebody’s like … they were recording this interaction, and they go, ‘Hey, leave them alone, he’s on drugs’… I’m like, what?”

The fellow officer responded, “Oh my God.”

Former sheriff calls video ‘jarring’ but urges waiting for investigation

The video ends with the officer involved in the incident opening the door to his police cruiser in order to drive himself to a hospital.

KIRO Newsradio asked former King County Sheriff John Urquhart for his reaction to watching the incident.

“You look at the video, and it’s certainly jarring by what you see,” Urquhart said initially. “That’s certainly something you, as a police officer, you generally don’t want to do if you can help it, especially if there’s something else you could have done that would keep you from punching him in the head umpteen times.”

Urquhart was also asked if any of his deputies did something similar.

“Yes, it happens,” he said, before adding how he responded to those incidents. “I don’t like it. Let’s see what happened. Let’s see why you were doing that. Tell me, officer, why you felt you had to punch the guy in the head that many times, and there may be a good reason for it. But until there is an investigation, until we can talk to the officer and find out what he was thinking at the time, what else the suspect had done. How big the suspect was? Was he on drugs? There are all kinds of things that we really don’t know. All we have is this video, and I’m not going to make excuses for the officer. That’s for darn sure. But what I will say is, let’s wait and find out what all the facts are.”

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