State trooper uses ‘arm-bar takedown’ to body-slam, arrest man (VIDEO)

Cellphone video has surfaced showing a Louisiana State Police trooper slamming a man to the ground, while making an arrest on Bourbon Street, then shoving another man into a line of trash cans. State police said he acted appropriately.

The video of the incident from June 24 has been viewed half-a-million times on Facebook. What is shown is a state trooper standing in front of two men and talking to them while making them move away from the entrance to a bar. It is not clear what is being said until one of the men said, “How is this OK?” and raised his arm.

At that point, the other man moves in front of his friend, perhaps to defuse the situation, but the state trooper suddenly pushes him out of the way into a line of trash cans. The officer then tries to arrest the other man who resists. Finally, he body-slams him to the ground before placing him in handcuffs.

The man, 39-year-old Michael Hoffman from Illinois, was treated for a cut to the hip and has received a summons to appear in New Orleans Municipal Court on counts of criminal trespass, public intoxication, disturbing the peace and resisting arrest, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate.

Police said the state trooper had just finished a 12-hour shift when he was flagged down by employees at the Beach on Bourbon bar requesting help “with an intoxicated subject refusing to leave.”

Hoffman complained he had not received his debit card back from bartenders, according the photographer, Joshua Plauche, who caught the incident on film with his cellphone.

The head of the Louisiana State Police said the officer’s use of force was appropriate with conditions on Bourbon Street at 4:00 a.m.

“It is easy to take a tape and pick it apart, but my troopers are dealing with a lot of people who are intoxicated and a lot of unknowns,” Colonel Mike Edmonson, head of Louisiana State Police, told The Advocate. “Unless you’re in the heat of the moment, you don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know who these individuals are, where they’ve been and what they’re doing.”

Edmondson said the trooper used a common police tactic known as an “arm-bar takedown” to gain control of the situation.