Skip to Content
Streetsblog USA home
Streetsblog USA home
Log In
Austin

Brutal Jaywalking Arrest in Austin Caught on Video

2:20 PM EST on November 9, 2015

Austin police were captured on video beating a group of "jaywalkers" into submission late last Wednesday in an incident that reeks of racial profiling.

The arrest was recorded and shared on Facebook by Rolando Ramiro. He told the website Photography is Not a Crime that he and a group of friends were trying to cross a street that had been barricaded and closed to car traffic. As they crossed the street, an officer demanded ID, Ramiro said, and one of the friends refused. Then three of the five were tackled and punched by the police.

"We were just walking," Jeremy Kingg, one of the men arrested, told news site ATTN:. "I wasn't doing anything to be a threat and they started using extreme force."

Kingg, Matthew Wallace, and Lourdes Glen were arrested and charged with walking against the light. Wallace was also charged with resisting arrest.

Kingg told ATTN: that he thinks race factored into the arrests because two of the five people crossing the street in the group, presumably lighter-skinned, were not detained. (You can hear them protesting, one from behind the camera, in the above video.)

Austin police were under fire for an aggressive jaywalking arrest less than two years ago when a young female jogger was cuffed and arrested in a "jaywalking sting" operation.

In addition to being a completely ineffective way to make anyone safer, jaywalking enforcement is clearly a path to harassment and the dangerous escalation of situations that would otherwise harm no one. For Jeremy Kingg, walking in Austin won't be the same again:

be careful crossing the street in austin because if you accidentally go at the wrong time they will make a big deal... just a heads up

— kinGGy (@JeremyKingg) November 6, 2015

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog USA

Why We Care About Some Transportation Tragedies More Than Others

Why do we respond to major transportation disasters with so much urgency — and why don't we count our collective car crash epidemic among them?

March 28, 2024

The Toll of History: MTA Board Approves $15 Congestion Pricing Fee

New York City's first-in-the-nation congestion pricing tolls are one historic step closer to reality after Wednesday's 11-1 MTA board vote. Next step: all those pesky lawsuits.

March 28, 2024

Take Thursday’s Headlines Home, Country Roads

Heat Map reports on why rural Americans are resisting electric vehicles, and why it might not matter much for the climate.

March 28, 2024

Guest Commentary: Traffic Engineers Must Put Safety Over Driver Throughput

No other field would tolerate this level of death and destruction. The tragedy of West Portal is more evidence that the traffic engineering profession is fundamentally broken.

March 27, 2024
See all posts