Austin, TX — In today’s ‘See Something, Say Something’ society, doing the ‘pee pee dance’ while waiting for a bus is grounds for police action — at least that’s what a woman in Austin thought when she called the cops on a dancing man. Unfortunately, for the dancing man, police would also perceive his harmless behavior as a threat and move to neutralize it.
This latest instance of ridiculous police brutality was captured on video Tuesday outside of an Austin restaurant. As the video begins, a nicely dressed man was standing at a bus stop doing a bit of a sidestep dance in place. The officer responding to the fearful woman’s 911 call perceived this dance as a potentially dangerous act.
The dancing man appeared to have a mental imbalance and may have flipped the bird at someone driving by. According to witnesses at the scene, the man may have had “some kind of disorder” and a “mental imbalance of some kind.” However, this was not grounds for what happened next.
In the video, we see the man doing nothing other than dancing when the officer approaches him as if he’s holding a child hostage. Within just a few moments the officer has his taser drawn, aiming it at the man’s head.
When the bus shows up, the man attempts to get on it, as it appears that was his intention the entire time. However, the cop would not have it. As the man attempted to walk toward the bus, the cop waved it on.
“He didn’t do anything,” a bystander says just before the situation turns violent. “He’s just standing there, minding his own business.”
For dancing, this man was shot with a taser and then tackled, assaulted, and handcuffed.
“Stop tasering him, you asshole,” a bystander yells as the cop continues his assault.
“Am I under arrest,” the man keeps asking as the cop sits on him.
“Put your hands behind your back and stop resisting,” says the officer to the man who is lying face down and not resisting at all.
At this point, another officer shows up and apparently had no other way to join in the assault, so he started grabbing the man’s legs and twisting them.
“What the fuck, you can’t do that,” another bystander yells.
“He is not even moving,” a woman says.
A third cop then shows up and the officers, clearly at a loss for what their justification was for attacking the man, simply stand around and talk about ‘safety.’
For good measure, to make sure this handcuffed dancing man, who had harmed no one, would be absolutely neutralized — a fourth cop showed up.
“Four cop cars for a person that was appearing a little unstable but not bothering anyone,” says the woman taking the video.
PD Investigating Controversial Arrest of Professor Found ‘Dancing’ at Bus Stop (VIDEO)
by Chris White | 12:48 pm, February 9th, 2017
Police in Austin, Texas are fielding a growing number of calls for information about the use of a taser during the arrest of a University of Texas associate professor earlier this week. Some say 35-year-old Nedialko Dimitrov was just dancing at a bus stop, but the cops say he acted unstable and they could not risk allowing him to get on the city bus.
According to local news station KXAN, the incident occurred on Tuesday and a passerby captured a nearly 10 minute video of some of the incident. That passerby, Victoria Watson, told the news station that she believed the man appeared to have some sort of mental imbalance that was causing him to act “unstable.”
“From my perspective the young man had behavioral issues. He had some sort of imbalance,” Watson said in an interview after the incident.
Police are saying they initially responded to the scene after receiving calls of a man yelling and making odd gestures at people and vehicles passing by.
Watson started filming after cops arrived and she says it is her belief the cops escalated the situation and eventually used a taser on him to bring him to the ground and put him in handcuffs.
Just prior to the actual arrest, Watson says Dimitrov appeared to be trying to board a bus and cops evidently wanted to stop him from doing so.
“I think that the officer was wrong by prohibiting him from getting on the bus,” Watson said in an interview.
After Dimitrov was in cuffs, unidentified witnesses can be heard on the video yelling at the police for unnecessarily arresting the man, who they say was no threat.
The video has started to spread on social media and other police watchdog websites where claims are being made that a man was arrested for “dancing” at a bus stop. However, there does appear to be a little more to the story, at least according to the cops.
A former law enforcement officer in the Austin area for 25-years, Jerry Staton, gave his opinion of the situation to a KXAN reporter after reviewing the video. According to Staton, Dimitrov’s actions could be perceived as hostile, especially at the point in the video where he approached the cop car.
Stanton further explained, “When you encounter someone, you don’t know who that person is, you do know that the number of officers being assaulted and killed and attacked and even ambushed has risen dramatically, so you know cops out there he has a tough job.”
Dimitrov was ultimately arrested on charges of public intoxication, resisting arrest and evading detention. He was then booked in the Travis County Jail after refusing treatment at a local hospital.
LawNewz reached out to the Austin Police Department for comment and we will update this story when we receive a response. However, a department spokesperson did tell other local outlets that they are aware of the video and, “As is standard protocol, the chain of command will review the report and all videos to determine if any policy violations occurred.”
A former law enforcement officer in the Austin area for 25-years, Jerry Staton, gave his opinion of the situation to a KXAN reporter after reviewing the video. According to Staton, Dimitrov’s actions could be perceived as hostile
Former law enforcement officer says?
Imagine my surprise.
The guy posed no threat to anyone.
...you do know that the number of officers being assaulted and killed and attacked and even ambushed has risen dramatically...
The mental jackass appeared alone at the bus stop while he did the pee-pee dance and talked to himself. When the cop stopped the bus, a crowd appeared to get on. It would seem they would not share the bus stop with a wingnut acting like a Deckard. The cops let the normal people board the bus, and carted his butt off so normal people could resume using the bus stop without have to mingle with a Deckard doing the pee-pee dance while talking to himself.
