Body cam video shows New Jersey cop punching woman on the beach
Police in Wildwood, New Jersey, have released body cam footage of an officer repeatedly punching a 20-year-old woman suspected of drinking alcohol on the beach. The violent encounter between the beachgoer, Emily Weinman, and two cops whose names have not been released was previously seen in a viral cell phone video capturing part of the incident.
In the new footage, Weinman takes an apparently negative Breathalyzer test and declines to give her last name and phone number, asking the police to wait for her aunt, who is over 21, to arrive and claim responsibility for the alcohol present. "That's it, I'm done with you," one officer says. "You're about to get dropped."
Weinman walks away from the officers protesting that she has done nothing wrong, and after she appears to turn and shove the cop wearing the camera, they slam her to the ground, with one officer holding her down as the other pulls her hair and hits her on the head.
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The two officers involved have been put on desk duty while their conduct is investigated, but Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano said he thinks the cops "were doing their job" because the Weinman "refused to comply." Weinman, meanwhile, was slapped with a bevy of charges including aggravated assault on a police officer, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and underage possession of alcohol.
See the bystander's video here, and watch the body camera footage below. Bonnie Kristian
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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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