A video showing police handcuff a security guard who lunged at a suspect is going viral as viewers say that’s what the police should be doing.
The footage was shot by Erica Ramseur, in Harvey, Illinois, just south of Chicago. The first in a series of three videos shows a Black man held down in the middle of the street by three men who appear to be security guards. The police arrive, sirens blaring, and take over the arrest.
Before the first video ends, Ramseur says the security guards maced the man. Ramseur did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.
In the second clip, a Black officer pulls the suspect up from the ground and is walking him to his police car when one of the white security guards hits the suspect in the face.
The officer immediately puts himself between the guard and the restrained man before pushing the guard away. He says something to another officer, and by the third video, a police officer is handcuffing the security guard against the police car.
The fact that the police officer defended a Black man from being hit by the security guard is a surprising and welcome change from the barrage of videos showing cops turning on unarmed people, especially Black people.
“THIS … is the Police REFORM we are talking about,” @jr_mc5 wrote on TikTok.
However, some remained skeptical of how everything played out.
“[The guard] wouldn’t have gotten in any trouble whatsoever if he was a police officer,” u/RashyAsscheek theorized on a Reddit post about the incident.
Others expressed concern that the cop only reacted the way he did because he knew someone was filming at a distance.
