Halloween night in Coconut Grove is a well-known annual mad house, and police are out in full force. Though, this year it seems that City of Miami police officers may have gotten out of hand with their use of force on partying patrons. A YouTube video has been making the rounds in city hall showing police violently punching suspects and seemingly picking revelers out of the crowd at random and throwing them to the ground to be handcuffed. Last night, CBS4 ran with the story on their 11 p.m. news cast, but in their infinite wisdom doesn't even link the video on their website. Here's the entire video that's sending waves through city hall and has now sparked an internal investigation.
Warning: There's graphic violence and some obscene language.
The video opens with several City of Miami police officers trying to handcuff a downed man while surrounded by a loud crowd. It's not known why the man was brought down in the first place, but someone in the chant was already yelling something about Rodney King so it's possible there was previous violence not caught on tape. Other people are yelling that the man did nothing wrong.
At one point a woman in little more than a pink tutu and bra enters the fray. Next we see her, she is on the asphalt being handcuffed while police grab at her legs to subdue her, and is latter seen being manhandled around by police.
Later another man is pulled from the crowd and thrown violently down by police officers. One officer holds the man back while another violently and repeatedly punches him in the face.
Later, a heavyset and bald police officer seemingly at random pulls a man from the crowd wearing a 300-style gladiator costume and forcibly throws him down on the road.
Other police officers are seen shoving random members of the assembled crowd.
"What you see makes you wonder if the police officer went beyond the call of duty," City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado told CBS4.
Regalado has called for a full investigation into what happened before the camera started rolling, while a police spokesman tells the station that, "Internal affairs is looking into it to find out what happened on that scene and why."
