An image captured from video taken by Alex Perez shows Westfield police officers attempting to restrain a combative individual. (Photo courtesy of Alex Perez)
WESTFIELD – A snippet of video depicting part of a call for police services was posted on social media Wednesday morning and has resulted in dozens of comments from the public – and one from the city police department’s public information officer.
The ten seconds of cell-phone video, captured by and provided to The Westfield News by Alex Perez, was shot through the windows of a moving vehicle and shows two officers struggling with a person on the ground. The view of the scene is intermittently blocked as the videographer’s vehicle moves past a parked police cruiser. In two brief glimpses, an officer’s hand appears to be moving up and down as if the officer is striking the person.
Comments on Facebook were divided between those who assume the worst and are critical of the officers and those who point out that the video only shows a small part of the incident and that the people commenting know practically nothing about the incident.
In response to questions about the incident, Capt. Michael McCabe, the department’s usual spokesperson, initially declined to comment pending his routine review of calls for police services and an opportunity to speak with the officers involved.
However, later in the day, McCabe posted a comment on Facebook addressing the incident.
McCabe said that the incident was a response to a call for service regarding a subject of a Section 12 order, an order requiring involuntary hospitalization because of a concern that the person in question, in this case a six foot tall stocky man in his mid 40s, had been deemed to be threat to himself or others.
Police records show that hospital staff had called police to request that officers find and return to the hospital a man who had been “in and out of the ER lobby and refusing to be seen by staff” before he fled the hospital.
McCabe wrote that when the officers found the man on Court Street, he did not obey their instructions. He reports the man repeatedly refused to comply with the officers’ orders and violently resisted when they were forced to physically take him into custody.
“Because of his clothing and state of mind, both electronic and chemical applications were ineffective”, McCabe wrote, and confirmed later that the officers had first attempted to use both Mace and a Taser in their efforts to subdue the man.
McCabe also said that the apparent punches seen in the video were in keeping with police training and procedures.
He explained that when police are attempting to take control of of a person lying on his stomach and holding his hands close to his chest, as he said the man in this incident was doing, police are trained to administer “distraction strikes”. He said the intent of the blows is to provoke an involuntary response from the subject and cause him to move his hands in response to the punches, thus allowing police to take control of his hands and apply handcuffs.
McCabe puts the responsibility for the violence squarely on the subject, writing “At any point had he simply done what was he being reasonably asked of him to do, the efforts to bring him into custody would have been amicable.”
Once the man was subdued, he was transported back to the hospital.
McCabe concludes “The good news is that no one was hurt during the incident” and states “Out of concern for the individual’s privacy, we will not be commenting further on the incident.”
However, he said later, the police investigation into the incident is incomplete.
On the forum, others continued to comment and many of them seemed to ignore McCabe’s post.
The polar and often vituperative comments continued to flow, both by persons assuming unreasonable use of force and other commenters supporting the officers and offering them the benefits of the doubt.
