Burlington Police on Monday night released three videos of an incident in which two officers hit a 20-year-old man as they held him face-down in the middle of a busy Burlington street Sunday morning. Officers also used pepper spray and stunned the man with a Taser, police said Monday.
Police released the videos after a 38-second video taken by a bystander who posted the video to YouTube went viral, garnering more than 5,000 views by Monday.
Burlington Police said they will review the incident as they do all instances in which officers use force.
The incident took place at 1:28 a.m. Sunday morning in Burlington at the intersection of Main Street and South Winooski Avenue, police said. Police sought to arrest 20-year-old Shane Langevin, of Winooski, after he allegedly hit another man and knocked him to the ground, according to police.
Police pinned Langevin to the ground amid ongoing traffic and the YouTube video shows them hit Langevin on the head or upper back.
Police said Langevin attempted to stand up and used his elbow to hit officer Ryan Rabideau’s right eye. That part of the scuffle is not visible on the bystander’s video. He also struck officer Ethan Czyzewski in the jaw, according to police.
When Langevin freed himself and attempted to flee, police shot him with a Taser causing him to fall to the ground, police said.
Officers struck Langevin’s back in an effort to get him to free his hands, according to police. The hits were “distractionary strikes,” police said, executed in hopes of distracting or stunning the man to get control of him.
Police repeatedly asked Langevin to comply and stop resisting and he did not, police said.
Also during the incident, police used pepper spray on a bystander, Michael Mazza, 32, of Milton. According to police, Mazza had approached the officers with clenched fists.
Mazza and Langevin were taken into custody. Neither was injured but Czyzewski was treated for a facial contusion at Fletcher Allen’s emergency room, police said.
Police charged Langevin with simple assault and assault on a police officer (two counts), resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Mazza was charged with impeding a police officer, according to police.
The two officers directly involved in the incident were not wearing body cameras. About half of the approximately 60 uniformed members of the Burlington Police Department wear cameras, according to Deputy Chief Bruce Bovat.
The rest of the department is expected to have body cameras by January, he said.
“The public has seen a sliver, they have seen a sliver of the entire incident,” Bovat said.
This winter the state Legislature passed a bill calling for a study of whether all officers who carry Tasers should also be required to wear a camera. That study is due in January.
Allen Gilbert, head of the American Civil Liberties Union in Vermont, agreed that more police should wear cameras. It protects the public, as well as police, he said.
“What you want is to have the real picture rather than the interpretation when you’re trying to form an objective view of what happened,” Gilbert said.
