In June, Fudge was arrested for assault on a police officer and two other felony charges.
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For what it’s worth, on the video witnesses can be heard speaking out against the over zealousness police demonstrated, but to no avail as cops continued to abuse the one-legged man. While filming the incident, LaBouvier can be heard noting the “lack of respect” for the suspect as his clothes were pulled off during the incident. However, those sticks that were initially believed to be weapons turned out to be crutches. They said before what you see in this video, the man was waving wooden sticks at people near United Nations Plaza, then stepped into oncoming traffic on Market Street.
San Francisco cops pinned down a man with one leg after they mistook his crutches for weapons, witnesses said.
. Which is to say, that we’ve normalized and habitualized the kind of policing in San Francisco and the rest of America that brutalizes the most vulnerable people, which strips them of their human dignity, the agency to their bodies - to walk with crutches when physically disabled, to have this body unviolated - when in actuality, they are whom the police are especially supposed to be protecting.
“These are my crutches”. First one can see the man’s buttocks being exposed, and minutes later his entire back. “I use these to walk”, he explains. “Is this respectable? When I say “no”, is this what you do to me?” the man said.
However, the video also shows that the man was already handcuffed from the onset of the recording. “The more he said ‘No!’ and more he questioned them ‘Why are you doing this?’ the worse it got in terms of their determination to assert their force.”
Around 6 minutes into the footage, the suspect began saying that he was in pain from the take-down and claimed he had been suffering from an infectious sore on one of his legs.
The man was eventually taken to the hospital against his will. It does not appear as if he was jailed or charged with any crime.
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Journalist Chaedria LaBouvier, who witnessed the appalling scene in San Francisco’s downtown financial district, told RT that everyone was “shocked that there would be this much force and it would be warranted.”
