Video shows police punching, choking, stunning a black man accused of jaywalking

Police officers.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Nine body camera videos released by the city of Asheville, North Carolina, on Monday show a police officer, Christopher Hickman, aggressively assaulting a man, Johnnie Rush, who was stopped on suspicion of jaywalking.

Rush, who is black, was walking home from work when he was confronted by Hickman, who is white, as well as a second officer, Verino Ruggiero, who was still in training. The officers told Rush he had "just committed four crimes in a row": trespassing by walking across a parking lot and jaywalking "again and again."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.