A Missouri police officer was placed on leave from police duty after a video, which went viral over the weekend, showed him threatening to “fuck […] up” a civilian.
In the video, which has already racked up more than 1.7 million views on the social media platform TikTok, an off-duty St. Joseph Police Department officer identified as Brandon Harrison is shown verbally berating and physically threatening a man he believed had hit his car, according to the Kansas City Star.
Harrison, who was wearing a cut-off t-shirt and backwards blue and white “Trump 2020” hat, had been with the department since Jan. 7, 2019.
The video begins after the altercation was already underway and shows Harrison, who stands nearly a foot taller than the civilian male, later identified as Max McLeod, standing inches away from the man and yelling at him to “sit down” on the ground.
McLeod attempts to speak to a uniformed officer who had arrived on the scene but Harrison interrupts, screaming, “You just hit my fucking car. Sit the fuck down.”
“Please get out of my face,” the man asks Harrison.
“I’m not working right now. I’m on vacation. I will fuck you up. Sit down,” Harrison responds.
The uniformed officer tells McLeod to “do what he says,” and sit down.
Harrison then claims to have witnessed McLeod hit his car and alleges that he was lying to the uniformed officer.
“You don’t fucking lie to her about that bullshit. I just watched you hit me,” Harrison yells at the now-sitting man. “Tell that to a fucking judge and see who they fucking believe bitch.”
The man then asks the officers to “get out of his vehicle” and can be heard calling the police and asking for a sheriff. Harrison overhears him and starts laughing, saying, “I am the police.”
In an interview with local news station WFLA8, McLeod described Harrison as “out of control – just out of control.”
McLeod also said that Harrison was mistaken about the entire incident, and that he had called the police after a truck had hit his car and damaged his side mirror. The uniformed officer arrived to take his statement, but Harrison showed up soon after and accused them of hitting his car.
“He tried to say that we hit his truck, and in all reality, it wasn’t his truck. It was a first [generation] Dodge that hit our car,” McLeod said.
The St. Joseph Police Department posted a statement to Facebook saying the details of the incident were being investigated and that Harrison had “been relieved from official police duties.”
[image via TikTok screengrab]
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