A police officer in Arizona is now on administrative leave after a video surfaced online showing him cold-cocking a woman in the face.
The Flagstaff Police Department learned of the video Wednesday. It shows Officer Jeff Bonar punching an unidentified woman during an arrest earlier in the day, Sgt. Cory Runge said in a statement to the Arizona Republic.
“Our agency is very concerned by what is depicted in this video,” Runge said. “We are immediately initiating an internal investigation into this incident.”
The seven-minute video, which has been shared more than 1,700 times since Wednesday’s incident, shows the woman arguing with two officers, claiming that she does not have an active warrant.
“You cannot arrest me! I know my laws,” the woman yells. “You cannot arrest me until I know that I have a warrant. I need to hear it.”
Someone off-camera then tells the woman that she should let the officers “run her name” to verify she no longer has an active warrant for her arrest.
One of the officers — apparently Bonar — then tells her to “stop resisting” before Bonar throws a right cross to her face.
“Hey, you can’t hit a girl like that!,” the man shooting the video says. He then confirms that he caught the entire incident on video. “Hey, what the f–k.”
The woman, who is referred to as Marissa throughout the video, is seen crying, holding her face before she is eventually led into a squad car. Bonar also threatened to use his Taser if she resisted further.
Jimmy Sedillo said the woman in the video is his girlfriend, the Arizona Republic reported. He said they received an eviction a week earlier and were due to vacate the residence Wednesday.
Sedillo said Bonar and other authorities were watching the couple leave and lock up the home, but Bonar identified the woman as she left the house as having a warrant out for her arrest.
“She had a warrant a few weeks ago,” Sedillo told the newspaper. “He still assumed she had a warrant.”
Sedillo, along with his two children, mother, niece and brother-in-law, then watched as his girlfriend got tackled. Sedillo’s brother-in-law, Danny Paredes, caught the melee on video and later shared it on Facebook.
