5 cases of police brutality caught on camera (video)

1. Roseline Appolis.

Warning: This video contains violence and foul language.

Video footage shows Roseline Appolis (50) on the ground while a man believed to be a police officer tries to handcuff her.

One of the officers is then seen deliberately stepping on her head as he “climbs over” her.

Commenting on the clip, a YouTube user said: “Disgusting F%^($!!!! How can that cop stand and walk on the woman’s head? THAT is Police Brutality!!!”

Western Cape Community Safety MEC Dan Plato’s spokesperson Ewald Botha said the department had sent an official to speak to Appolis to encourage her to get a medical report to bolster her case when she laid her complaint, the SA Press Association reported.

2. Eugene Nel 

Warning: This video contains images of violence.

Video footage captured in November shows former Lichtenburg Mayor, Eugene Nel, scuffling with police officers outside a shopping centre as they try to put him in a van.

The YouTube video had been posted with the title: Police brutality in Lichtenburg.

North West police later denied that excessive force was used in Nel’s arrest.

“If arresting a suspect is brutality, then it means suspects will never be arrested,” police spokesperson Brigadier Thulani Ngubane said.

Ngubane added that there was no indication of Nel being deliberately undressed and that it was something that must be expected in a scuffle like the one seen in the video.

3. Eric Garner

Warning: This video contains images of violence.

Cases of suspected police brutality continue to be reported outside of South Africa.

The US justice department is to launch a civil rights investigation into the death of Eric Garner, a black man who was placed in an apparent chokehold by a white New York police officer, BBC reported.

In July, Garner (43) was stopped on a street in New York on suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes.

The video shows a lengthy exchange between Garner (who apparently stopped a fight) and police, during which he verbally refuses to be handcuffed.

Several officers are seen restraining Garner, with one holding him by the neck.

Garner, who was believed to be asthmatic, can be heard shouting “I can’t breathe” repeatedly, before dying of an alleged heart attack.

4. Unidentified Nigerian man.

Warning: This video contains violence and foul language.

In March, video footage emerged of what appears to be two uniformed police officers identified as David Gunn (43) and Gerrit Januarie (46) kicking and hitting a naked man (believed to be a Nigerian national) in the middle of a street in Cape Town.

Gunn had been dismissed from the police after disciplinary action, while Januarie resigned before disciplinary action could be taken against him.

The Cape Town Magistrates’ Court ordered that the victim’s name not to be published.

5. Mido Macia.

Warning: This video contains images of violence.

Last year, taxi driver Mido Macia (27) died in police custody after being arrested for parking his car on the wrong side of the road.

A video taken by bystanders showed Macia being manhandled, handcuffed to the back of a police van and dragged hundreds of metres in Daveyton on the East Rand.

Macia was found dead in his cell about two hours later.

The trial of the nine Daveyton police officers implicated in Macia’s murder was postponed to July 2015.