This is outrageous … a man who was simply videotaping cops who stopped a black driver was ordered to stop taping, and it ended with the guy getting assaulted.
Joe Bennett was driving home in Jeffersontown, Kentucky when he saw a number of police cars swarm a car. Bennett decided to live stream the stop on Facebook … as he said, he was doing his “due diligence as a citizen.”
Joe is at least 50 feet away, and maybe further, saying “I just wanted to observe, so I tried to give them distance.”
He actually says the video is “the most boring live video ever,” when at the 3-minute mark a cop walks ominously toward Bennett and orders him to stop filming, coming up with a bogus excuse that it’s a crime scene investigation — as if that’s a justification.
Bennett refuses to stop, so the cop asks for his ID. Now, technically, if a cop asks for ID — even if the request violates the law — you’re supposed to comply, but Bennett says he did nothing wrong so he refuses. That’s when the cop attacks, grabbing for Bennett’s phone and slugs him.
A police official told Spectrum 1, “Officers were in the area investigating and making arrests related to a check fraud scheme thwarted at the Citizens Union Bank across the street from the McDonalds.” What’s unclear … cops reportedly say a suspect claimed Bennett was the driver in the check fraud scheme.