Purdue officer shown aggressively arresting Black man in viral video
On social media, the victim has been identified as Purdue student Adonis Tuggle. "I NEED HELP!!!" he posted Wednesday on Instagram.
A police officer at Purdue University is being accused of aggressively arresting a man in a now-viral video.
On social media, the victim has been identified as Adonis Tuggle. “I NEED HELP!!!” he posted Wednesday on Instagram. “Please share this to as many ppl as possible and spread the news.”
“Officer Jon Selke of Purdue Police punched me repeatedly, elbowed me in the face, smothered my face into the snow, and choked me with his elbow while having me pinned to the ground the entire time,” Tuggle posted of his Friday night encounter. “Purdue police refuse to give me body cam footage and have concluded Officer Selke ‘did no wrong’. Help me get justice and hold this man accountable.”
A privately captured video shared on The Purdue Exponent shows the officer pinning Tuggle — who the Exponent says is a junior in the College of Health and Human Sciences — to the ground as he shouts that the officer is hurting him. A woman heard in the video repeatedly says her boyfriend is being hurt, and at one point, the officer turns to her and says if she touches him again, he will taser her. She has been identified by the Exponent as Nicole Dubish.
The video clip is raising the ire of people both on and off campus.
On Twitter, a message reads, “I am in no way posting this to perpetuate the cycle of black trauma, I am posting to spread awareness in an effort that that officer Jon Selke(Badge 91) is held accountable for his actions. This act of brutality happened at Purdue University to a classmate of mine Adonis Tuggle.”
Another social media post appears to be from a group called Black Purdue, where Tuggle himself writes how “on campus I had the Purdue police called on me while I was having an argument with my gf. Officer Jon Selke arrive on the scene and was completely out of pocket toward me probably for being black. Without even talking to me this man PUNCHED multiple times, elbowed me in the face, smothered my face in the snow, and even was CHOKing me multiple time and not once stoped. And I was just informed that internal investigation felt the officer did NO wrong…completely to be left off the hook!”
The Exponent report states that an investigation is underway, according to Purdue University Police Chief John Cox, who said the officer was responding to a call that a woman was being held against her will. Police spokesperson Capt. Song Kang said officers were called by a bystander because of a “domestic disturbance of a couple arguing during a breakup.”
Tuggle was subsequently arrested for resisting law enforcement, a misdemeanor.
“I don’t have the details of the step-by-step conversation, but he just didn’t follow the instruction of, ‘Hey, come over here,'” Kang said. “The subject did not follow the instruction of the officer, so he was getting detained, and he resisted, therefore he was arrested.”
A meeting about Tuggle’s arrest is reportedly planned on Thursday at Purdue’s Black Cultural Center.
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