There is a specific kind of sorrow that comes with watching a Black man being punched in the head by a white cop at a gas station parking lot. That’s what happened in Oklahoma last weekend, and footage of the ordeal went viral online. Now, the police chief is speaking out about the clip and the arrest that has some folks demanding answers.
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Just outside a Casey’s pizza joint near the junction of I-40 in Henryetta — 50 miles south of Tulsa — a police officer was attempting to detain Ramone Hester, a Black man. He was being picked up on an outstanding domestic violence warrant after he allegedly punched his girlfriend in the face.
Michael Harris, who recorded the encounter, said, “The first thing that I noticed was the officer striking him in the head,” according to News Channel 8. Harris recorded a white officer on top of a man and throwing punches to his head before witnesses began to gather around. Hester can be heard in the video screaming, “Oh my God! No! Somebody help me man!”
Harris was clear about what he saw: “At no time did I ever see him try to harm the police officer. The only thing I seen was him protecting himself.”
However, Henryetta Police Chief Steve Norman is pushing a different narrative. “We were attempting to arrest him on that domestic violence charge,” he said. “And he just wasn’t going to go.”
Officers have had several prior encounters with Hester, and according to Chief Norman, the suspect was allegedly hostile in nearly every instance, News on 6 reported. Records show Hester, 44, has previous drugs and stolen property convictions in Oklahoma, and convictions in Kansas for drugs, stalking and robbery.
Chief Norman says in this latest case, the cop’s struggle with Hester started long before the record button was pressed, painting a picture of a suspect who chose combat over compliance 10,000 Facebook views later.
Another witness, Daniel Lyons, told News on 6 Hester “was resisting arrest, and when they started recording on the video that’s went viral, it doesn’t show the part where a minute before that he was trying to shove the officer off and get up and get away and resisting arrest.” He added how the viral clip “just shows the part where he’s laying on the ground screaming help me.”
Eventually, Hester was arrested and booked into the Okmulgee County Jail for resisting, aggravated assault and battery on a police officer and domestic violence charges.
As far as the video, Chief Norman said, “You can hear the officer; he’s out of breath. Given the hostility this individual has shown in the past with us and prior criminal charges, you know we are not going to mess around with that.”
Chief Norman suggested that Hester could “have easily given up, had his day in court and this would have never happened. […] We are human beings too, and we are trying to protect ourselves so that we can go home every night.”
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