Two men in London were searched by the police for drugs after bar staff overheard them allegedly talking about spiking women’s drinks.
In the viral TikTok video, which was posted four days ago, two police officers have the men detained with their hands behind their backs.
“We’ve been told by the staff that you’ve been overheard conspiring to spike someone,” the female officer says in the video.
She continues speaking but one of the detained men starts loudly denying that they did anything and drowns out and stops paying attention to the rest of what the officer is trying to communicate.
“James, James, I beg you to stop talking,” the other detained man says to his rowdy friend. “If you search us and there’s nothing there can you let us go?”
“Of course,” the officer responds. The rambunctious guy keeps going off and his friend tells him again to “stop talking.”
The female officer searches the rowdy one of the duo and her male partner searches the man who’s complying. She puts on purple gloves before searching his person. The last clip of the video shows the officer picking something up from the ground, but it’s unclear what it is.
The TikTok, uploaded by self-described street journalist @halfabenz, has more than 8 million views on the video-sharing platform. It was accompanied by the caption, “Two men conspiring to spike girls in south east London.”
About 85,000 women and 12,000 men between the ages of 16 and 59 experience rape, attempted rape or assault by penetration in England and Wales alone every year, according to the Rape Crisis Centre of England and Wales.
People in the comments were deeply alarmed by the situation and the non-compliant man’s behavior.
“Massive red flag that they think it’s funny and are shouting and screaming over the officer like petulant children. Be respectful,” one commenter said.
“This is the behavior from men who probably say ‘Not all men,'” another commenter wrote.
Others praised the officer’s handling of the situation saying, “she did her job and with confidence we love to see it.”
“Finally a cop [trying] to STOP A CRIME instead of waiting for a crime to be completed,” a commenter said.
The Daily Dot reached out to @halfabenz via TikTok comment and to the London Police Service via email.