(Matt Agorist) A deeply disturbing video has sparked an internal investigation into an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police officer after he was seen throwing an innocent man — who is recovering from brain cancer — to the ground and savagely beating him. The cop was in an apparent fit of road rage and the incident was captured on surveillance footage.
The disturbing video showed the unprovoked assault of Tom Trickle as he stood in his driveway on West Banta Road Thursday waiting for the delivery of a refrigerator.
According to several of the residents in the area, people often speed down West Banta despite it being a residential street. The IMPD officer was one of these alleged speeders.
On Thursday, the unnamed officer was on patrol in plainclothes in an unmarked car as he allegedly came flying down the road when he was spotted by Trickle.
“I think he was doing every bit of over fifty miles per hour,” said Trickle.
Expressing his aggravation with someone speeding down his street, Trickle raised his middle finger and told the person in the car, who he had no idea was a cop, to slow down.
“I give him a hand gesture. I basically gave him the bird,” Trickle said.
As TFTP has reported on numerous occasions, flipping the bird and cursing are constitutionally protected forms of speech. The U.S. Supreme Court even ruled, in City of Houston v. Hill, that police must tolerate even more abusive speech than an average citizen.
However, this cop was having none of it and he decided to abuse his authority and attack an innocent cancer patient over a raised middle finger. Moments after he was flipped off, the cop turned around, drove back to Trickle’s home and all hell broke loose.
“All of a sudden the same vehicle pulled up,” said neighbor Robert Turner, who witnessed the attack and tried to save Trickle. “I recognized it. I seen that it had emergency lights on when he went past and tapped his brakes I realized that it was an unmarked car.”
According to Turner and the video, the cop blocked the road with his car to get out and confront Trickle.
“When he pulled up he opened the door,” said Turner. “He had a polo on with a badge embroidered on it so I assumed at that time that he was on duty or had just gotten off duty.
“The gentleman opens his door and the first words out of his mouth were, ‘Who the F do you think you are, flipping me off?’”
Knowing he’d done absolutely nothing wrong, Trickle stood there and did not back down. That’s when the road raging cop attacked.
“He goes, ‘Get out of my face,’ and then he takes both hands like that and shoves me,” said Trickle, “and I just go back. My head hits the ground, you know.”
The video shows that the shove moved Trickle back approximately ten feet from where he was standing. Then, the officer jumped on top of the man to finish the job.
“When the officer chucked him immediately he got on top of him, followed him down the driveway, was on top of him, had his shirt grasped in one hand and then was trying to knock his hands down with the other,” said Turner. “Never identified himself by name, never identified himself as an officer until I realized that he had a patch on and I requested him to get a supervisor out here.”
Within minutes, multiple cops showed up as well as an ambulance that took Trickle to the hospital.
“I never knew he was a cop until after it was all done and over with,” said Trickle. “He didn’t have a marked police car and he didn’t have a uniform on so I didn’t know who he was.”
“My take is if the guy would have just slowed down in the first place we wouldn’t even be here,” said Turner. “There was no reason to come back here. No reason whatsoever.”
The road raging officer is now the subject of an IMPD Special Investigations Unit criminal investigation.
If you’d like to peacefully express your concern to the IMPD and ask that they remove this violent liability from the force before he kills someone, you can do so at the department’s Facebook page, here.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.