Video of SEPTA officer and man in handcuffs sparks debate

PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) A video of a SEPTA officer and a man in handcuffs is getting a lot of attention online. But does the video show the whole story?

FOX 29 went looking for answers.

The video posted on Facebook starts with an exchange of words between the SEPTA officer and a man in handcuffs.

It quickly escalates to a loud back and forth between the two as the officer tries to tell the man he wants him to sit down. As the man argues with officer, refusing to sit down, the officer takes a more aggressive approach. he uses his leg and body weight to take the man to the ground within inches of this concrete wall, according to the video.

The video posted online has more than 1,800 comments and ignited a debate about race with opinions on both sides of the issue. After watching the black man in handcuffs in the confrontation with an officer.
Chad Lassiter, of Black Men at Penn, teaches classes on race relations and diversity. He watched the video and had several observations on the behavior of the man in cuffs and the officer.

"At the end of the day, the final analysis, a situation like this, may have been a masculinity contest. The young man may have been saying, 'That's not a seat, yes sir, no sir.' The cop is like just, 'Sit down,'" he told FOX 29.

We showed the video to Sharette Campbell who rides SEPTA every day.

"Even though he was being handcuffed and he was in trouble for whatever reason. He still deserves respect. He's a human being," Campbell said.

Chad Lassiter says the confrontation could have ended badly.

"He could have actually hit his head on the cement and gone into cardiac arrest of something of that nature," said Lassiter.

SEPTA officials do not yet know the circumstances leading up to the video taped incident. They would not identify the man in cuffs or the officer.