An Oakland man says a police officer shot him with a rubber bullet or beanbag while he was videotaping last week's standoff between law enforcement and a small group that took over a building and lit fires after a day of peaceful anti-Wall Street protests.
Experts in police use of force who reviewed the footage Scott Campbell captured say it appears the volley was unprovoked and inappropriate, the Oakland Tribune reported Tuesday.
In the video posted on YouTube, Campbell, 30, is heard calling, "Is this OK?" to a line of riot gear-clad officers. He told the newspaper that he was asking if his distance from them was adequate because an officer had asked him to step back.
A firearm held by an officer then is seen going off, followed by Campbell's yelps of pain. The Oakland Police Department, which also has been criticized for wounding an Iraq War veteran during an October 25 skirmish, did not respond to a request for comment.
University of South Carolina criminal justice professor Geoffrey Alpert said that unless something occurred off-camera to provoke the officer, the shooting was "one of the most outrageous uses of a firearm" he'd ever seen.
"Unless there's a threat that you can't see in the video, that just looks like absolute punishment, which is the worst type of excessive force," Alpert said.
Campbell, who identifies himself as an anarchist, said he took video of the confrontation that occurred early November 3 because he wanted to document any instances of excessive force, but did not imagine that he would be a target. [AP]