Video: Seattle Officer Pepper Sprays Man Brandishing . . . A Cellphone

High school teacher Jesse Hagopian is reportedly planning to sue the city of Seattle after a police officer sprayed him with chemical irritant as he left a rally on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He was simply walking away while speaking on a cellphone, as the video below captures.

Hagopian had spoken at the event about how black lives matter on the Jan. 19th. Officers set up a barricade with their bicycles to prevent protesters from marching. A female officer yells “Stand back, stand back” and then inexplicably released the pepper spray.

The video is quite shocking and it is hard to imagine a context where this force was justified since no one seemed threatening or even attempting at that point to cross the line.