A sheriff’s deputy in Florida is on administrative leave after video surfaced showing the law enforcement officer striking a teen in handcuffs, WINK News reported.
The video, posted to Twitter on Thursday, shows two Lee County sheriff’s deputies holding the teen, who is in handcuffs, by the arms while apparently washing his face off with a hose. A third deputy enters the frame of the video, approaches the teen, elbows him in the face and walks away.
The Lee County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the deputy, according to the Fort Myers News-Press. Officials identified the detained person as 17-year-old Bienvenido Roman, the paper reported.
Twitter user @brycherrera1 posted the video, tagging the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. “Explain this,” the Twitter user wrote.
The Twitter user did not immediately respond to a request for more information on the video.
The Lee County’s Sheriff’s Office replied to @brycherrera1′s tweet saying that the video was under investigation. The sheriff’s office did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment on Saturday.
The deputies first attempted to arrest Roman in Fort Myers Shores on Tuesday, but the teen fled from the officers, according to NBC 2. The video reportedly shows Roman’s eventual arrest.
The teen’s family told WINK News that the teen lives two miles away from where the arrest was recorded.
Roman has reportedly been arrested 12 times since 2016, NBC 2 reported.
The deputy who was placed on administrative leave has not been publicly identified.
In an interview with WINK News, David Thomas, a senior research fellow with the National Police Foundation, said that the force used by the deputy in the video was unnecessary because the suspect was already detained.
“What you saw with the elbow … oftentimes when you see that, it’s because they’re angry,” Thomas, also a forensic psychology professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, told WINK News. “And he or she needed to get the last shot in.”