Another day, another video of police brutality.
The family of 17-year-old Marcel Hamer has released a cell-phone clip of a plainclothes New York City police officer hitting the teen while he lies in the gutter pleading one afternoon over the summer. Lawyers for Hamer say their client was suspected of smoking marijuana, but was ultimately just charged with disorderly conduct. “Mister, it was just a cigarette, sir,” says Hamer in the video, right before a partially obscured strike that appears to leave him unconscious.
“Do you wanna get fucked up?” the officer says. “Yeah, get it on film,” he tells the boy’s friends.
Brooklyn Paper reports that the June 4 incident is under investigation by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau. Hamer’s family says he has suffered from memory loss, dizziness, and headaches ever since.
The video comes the day after equally disturbing footage showing officers swinging at and pistol-whipping an unarmed 16-year-old a few months later in nearby Bed Stuy. “It is pervasive now, throughout the department,” said Hamer’s attorney, William Thompson, a former state Supreme Court judge. “It is indicative of an attitude in the police department that is, ‘Them against us. Let’s do whatever we want.’”
