NYPD officers charged after video catches teen getting pistol whipped

"The video speaks for itself, doesn’t it?" Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said Wednesday about a brief video recording that led to two New York Police Department cops being charged in connection to the pistol-whipping assault of a 16-year-old Brooklyn boy. The boy, who was arrested for marijuana possession, ended up with broken teeth and bruises.

The officers charged in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday are David Afanador, 33, and Tyrane Isaac, 36, both nine-year veterans.

The 82-second video of the teen's August 29 beating—widely available on the Internet—was captured by a local Crown Heights business. The tape shows the boy running before eventually stopping and raising his hands, after which he is pummeled and taken to the ground.

Thompson, the district attorney, told the New York Daily News that the two officers, who remain free and are scheduled to appear in court next month, "hit a defenseless unarmed young man in the mouth and attacked him while he tried to surrender." The cops' attorney, Stephen Worth, said there's more to the tape than meets the eye. "We’ve tried these cases in front of juries and we won these case in front of juries and I expect this to happen here as well," the New York Daily News quoted him as saying.

The officers' indictment follows a nationwide string of police brutality incidents caught on tape, some of which have had severe repercussions for the arresting officers. As the surveillance society blossoms—with the growth of surveillance cams, mobile phone cameras, and YouTube—the authorities can no longer turn a blind eye to police brutality.

A Staten Island grand jury, for example, is considering police brutality charges in connection to the death of a New York man who died while police arrested him for selling unlicensed cigarettes in July. Immediately following 42-year-old Eric Garner's arrest, the NYPD said the victim "went into cardiac arrest and died." But footage captured from an onlooker's mobile phone told a different story. As several offers subdued Garner, one allegedly using a choke hold, he is overheard yelling, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe."

In September, a South Carolina highway trooper was charged with assault and battery in connection to the unprovoked shooting of a motorist pulled over for a seatbelt violation—an incident that was videotaped by the officer's own dashcam.

Police misconduct in general has hit the limelight following the August 9 shooting death of an unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

That incident—which was not videotaped—sparked massive protests and widespread calls from politicians and the public for police to wear body cams. Ferguson police started using them a month after the shooting, as have other departments. The Minneapolis Police Department announced Friday that it had begun deploying the devices.