Cellphone video footage showing a Georgia cop repeatedly striking a homeless woman with his baton as she lay on the ground has prompted another investigation into the incident, Huffington Post reports.
Authorities made the announcement on Monday.
The video is close to two minutes long and was recorded on June 4. It shows the DeKalb County officer beating the woman and threatening to shoot her as she struggles inside of a local convenience store.
The woman was reportedly unarmed, but can be seen attempting to kick the officer. There’s at least one instance where she doesn’t appear to struggle at all, but is still repeatedly struck.
The investigation will be the second one into the incident and comes in response to the video resurfacing on social media over the weekend.
“It’s more we’re looking at the video to see if it aligns with the officer’s statement,” DeKalb County Police Spokeswoman, Shiera Campbell, told HuffPost on Tuesday. “Right now, what he put in his report is consistent with the video.”
An initial police report does not identify the officer. It states that he was responding to a complaint of a woman asking for money from customers inside a local store. When he approached her, she presented herself as a federal agent and gave a random badge number.
The woman was later identified as 38-year-old Katie McCrary. The officer repeatedly warned that she could be detained for impersonating a law enforcement official, McCray accused him of impersonating an officer himself and them grabbed his vest, badge and radio, according to the report.
“Let go or I’m going to shoot you,” the officer is heard twice telling her after she grabs his baton. People in the store can also be heard telling McCray to “stop resisting.”
He said he delivered an “unknown amount of baton strikes to her left leg” in the arrest report.
“One strike inadvertently struck the side of her head as she was moving around,” he wrote in the report.
McCray was detained and examined at the scene by an EMS unit. She was then transported to the DeKalb County Jail, and sent to Grady Memorial Hospital for further evaluation, the arrest report states.
The officer reported a “1/2 inch laceration on her left shin and a welt on her left forearm.”
An internal investigation found the officer’s use of force to be justified.
“The officer was cleared, following the Internal Affairs investigation,” the police department said in a statement. “Now that the Department has this new evidence we have reopened the investigation and will determine whether the incident is consistent with policy and the law.”
McCray was booked for obstructing or hindering law enforcement officers.
