A man, who was reportedly not a student, was arrested last week for entering East Los Angeles College, sitting in class, refusing to leave, and then assaulting a police officer in front of a roomful of students. The tense confrontation was captured on camera by a student in the classroom and has since been shared to social media where it’s currently making the rounds. The caption at the beginning reads, “Warning contains strong images. News and awareness education only“.
In the 2-minute clip, we can see two Sheriff’s deputies enter a classroom in East Los Angeles College. As soon as the law enforcement officials arrives, one asks the teacher, “Everything okay?” It’s difficult to discern what’s being said here, but we can just make out the teacher quietly uttering the words, “He’s not enrolled in this class,” and “He’s threatening me,” under his breath. From the other side of the classroom, you can hear the man pipe up, “You don’t wanna teach me? You just wanna bulls**t around. I told him I want to learn something and he [the teacher] stops class. I thought today was the first day of school.”
The officers then approach the man in an attempt to calm the situation down, and they ask him “What’s your name?” The man responds “Eric,” though it’s unclear if this is his real name. To make things easier, we’ll refer to him as Eric. “Let’s step outside,” requests the deputy. “For what?” Eric fires back. “Because the kids don’t want you here.“
“Well, I don’t give a f***.” declares Eric. The officer clarifies, “If you don’t leave, you’re gonna be arrested.” Unfortunately, the man refuses to leave. “I’m not gonna leave. I’ll get arrested, then.” The pair start to get closer to Eric, and one officer begins to put handcuffs on him. “You’re gonna take me?” Suddenly, the man begins to get violent and things begin to escalate as he tussles with one of the officers. While the other deputy initially helps to assist, Eric becomes so hostile, the deputy’s backup begins to back off a little, leaving the police officer struggling to defuse the increasingly heated physical altercation.
Eric even manages to wrestle the officer to the floor, throwing punches at him while doing so. As the chaos ensues, the students and the deputy look on in shock and disbelief. Fortunately, moments later, Eric begins to relent on his physical assault on the officer, and as the law enforcement official gets to his feet, you can hear the relief of the camerawoman as she utters, “Oh my god.” under her breath. The remains of the video sees Eric getting handcuffed again, and escorted out of the classroom. Finally, as the clip comes to an end, you can hear the teacher pick up the phone, saying, “Need some backup here. The officers can’t take this.”
While the shocking footage continues to gain momentum online, netizens were quick to dive into the comments section to share their thoughts on what they’d seen. Over on Reddit, one user criticized one of the deputy’s, who seemingly froze up when things began to escalate:
When they said he was the back up, he thought they meant he should physically back up and leave the other officer to fend for himself if he was needed for any reason.
draculabakula
Meanwhile, elsewhere, another commenter chimed in, penning, “Bro doesn’t have his life together, so he probably craves to go back to school, but he’s not behaving good about it.”
East Los Angeles College is yet to issue an official statement on the incident.
