A viral TikTok video shows a police officer grabbing his crotch when a woman repeatedly asked him for his name.
In the video, which has been viewed over 1.2 million times since being uploaded on Thursday by user @kimikat90, an officer repeatedly tells the TikToker filming to “get over there” and asks if she wants to “get pepper-sprayed.”
“Hurry up. Get up, over there,” he shouts, pointing in a direction.
“Stop shouting at me, and tell me your name, please,” the TikToker says.
“You wanna get pepper-sprayed?” the officer questions. “Get over there. Hurry up.”
The TikToker then asks another nearby officer for the first officer’s name. “What’s his name, sir? … He wants to pepper-spray my face,” she says.
She continues asking the first officer for his name, and he eventually responds by grabbing his crotch.
The TikToker reveals in a followup video posted on the same day that the encounter happened in Austin as she was driving from her house back to her workplace around lunchtime.
In the latest followup video, the TikToker alleges that the officer was an “off-duty officer here working for a private company” and that he was directing traffic.
After being redirected from her route, the TikToker says she “asked him for direction because I had no other way to go, and I wanted to turn left.”
“He kept telling me to go right,” she says. “I’m asking for direction, and he charges towards me, and this guy goes nuts, and he’s like, ‘Oh I’m going to f*cking arrest you if you don’t turn.’”
The TikToker says that’s when she realized “shit’s about to go down” and started recording.
She also reveals that she called 911 after the incident and reported the officer. “I was so upset. I had to pull over; I was crying,” she says.
She says she’s now speaking with an attorney “to see what we can do.”
Update 4:53pm CT, May 18: When reached for comment, the Austin Police Department (APD) told the Daily Dot it “is aware of a video circulating on social media depicting an officer engaging with a citizen while displaying unprofessional behavior” but that the officer is not affiliated with the APD.
“The officer in this video is not an Austin Police officer and is not wearing a Department-issued uniform, nor is he utilizing an APD patrol vehicle,” it said.
“We do not condone this behavior, and we hold our officers to the highest standards of integrity and professionalism,” it continued. “All APD officers working off-duty job assignments wear a full official APD uniform displaying a badge, their name, employee number and body worn camera,”
The Daily Dot has reached out to kimikat90.
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