Police repeatedly punched a black Harvard student during an indecent exposure arrest

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

published 17 April 2018

Cambridge, Massachusetts, police tackled and repeatedly punched a black Harvard student in the stomach while arresting him Friday night. The encounter was filmed by a bystander, and the police department has begun an internal investigation.

The student, identified as 21-year-old Selorm Ohene, a math major, was standing nude in the middle of a street, reportedly having a negative experience with hallucinogenic drugs. Several people called the police, and when the cops arrived, they spoke with Ohene — visibly unarmed and not in a normal state of mind — for just two minutes before slamming him to the ground. One officer has admitted to punching him five times in the stomach.

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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.

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