Police Launch Investigation After Video Appears To Show Cop Shoving Man In Wheelchair Into Street

The Huffington Post  |  By Lydia O'Connor

Posted: 01/22/2015 6:59 pm EST Updated: 01/22/2015 7:59 pm EST

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The San Francisco Police Department said Wednesday that it is launching an internal investigation after videos emerged appearing to show an officer pushing a man in a wheelchair into the street and nearly out of his seat.
The incident under investigation occurred around 4 p.m. Sunday in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley neighborhood, department spokeswoman Officer Grace Gatpandan told The Huffington Post.
According to bystanders’ videos posted to YouTube and Facebook, the incident began when Bo Frierson -- who is in a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury, according ABC 7 -- approached officers who were questioning his friends and began to intervene. After a verbal altercation, an SFPD officer appears to push Frierson over the curb. One of the videographers appears to rush to Frierson's aid.
“He tried to dump me out, you can see, a couple of times. Lucky for the seat belt,” Frierson told ABC 7 News. “What if I were to just fall on my face? I mean, I could have died.”
Gatpandan told HuffPost that the department’s internal affairs investigators and the independent Office of Citizens Complaints are looking into the incident. The department has not released the names of the officers in the video. Gatpandan told Bay City news that none of the officers has been put on leave.