Video of BART police officer punching handcuffed man spurs anger
In these videos from a July 29 arrest in downtown San Francisco, officers are seen taking Michael Smith and his girlfriend to the ground in response to a report of a possible armed robber.
Videos captured the moment in July when Bay Area Rapid Transit police officers pounced on Michael Smith and his girlfriend in downtown San Francisco, ordering them to the ground at gunpoint and handcuffing them.
As people gathered and recorded with their cellphones, Smith, 22, still handcuffed, crooked his head up and spit in an officer’s face. That prompted the officer to punch him in the face with a closed fist, causing Smith’s head to bounce off the ground.
People at the Embarcadero station exploded in screams of anger. Smith’s girlfriend and others told Smith to cooperate, and soon he and his girlfriend were hauled off to a police substation, where the woman was let go and Smith was booked on suspicion of assaulting and resisting police.
Police released the 911 call that led to the July 29 arrest of Michael Smith at the Embarcadero BART station in downtown San Francisco.
But the call that led to the July 29 confrontation — a report that Smith may have been armed and that he and another black man had threatened to rob someone on the train — turned out to be unfounded.
Facing a criminal trial last week on six counts of battery on an officer and one count of resisting police, a jury acquitted Smith of three battery charges and was hung on the remaining four. In releasing the series of videos Wednesday, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi called for prosecutors to drop the remaining counts, saying his client did nothing wrong.
“It’s really an example of what’s wrong with our system. The system run amok,” Adachi said. “It’s a story of a young African American man who was the victim of excessive force yet found himself having to stand trial for these serious misdemeanor crimes. This is an unfortunate drama and tragedy that gets played out throughout the country.”
In separate statements, both BART police and prosecutors defended officers’ actions that day. Though the district attorney’s office has not yet decided on whether to retry Smith, authorities have said law enforcement’s response was justified given the report of an armed robber and Smith’s apparent lack of cooperation.
“They did what they were trained to do,” said Deputy Chief Jeffrey Jennings of BART police. “We’re still going to do an internal investigation, but I don’t anticipate them having a different finding than what I saw.”
According to Jennings, the officer’s strike to Smith’s face was a tactical move.
“I consider that a distraction blow — forcefully deflect a person who spit on you and keep their head countered away from you,” he said.
The San Francisco district attorney’s office defended its prosecution of Smith, arguing that the videos don’t provide the full picture.
“Today the Public Defender released an edited sequence of body camera footage that a judge excluded from evidence,” prosecutors said in a statement. “In excluding the evidence, the judge cited editorial choices that were made, such as altering the audio levels and omitting segments where the defendant is alleged to have bit, kicked, and spit on BART police officers.”
Smith’s girlfriend was never charged with a crime, and the officers involved in the arrests are back on duty, BART officials said.
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