Two cops have sparked outrage after allegedly throwing a disabled man out of his wheelchair so he slammed face first into the sidewalk.
The Washington D.C. officers allegedly picked up Dwight Harris and forced him to fall forwards onto the concrete with no chance to break his fall.
A video of the incident posted on YouTube shows the newspaper vendor’s head covered in blood and badly bruised as he lies on the ground screaming.
Police in Washington D.C. have claimed he was refusing to be moved on but Mr Harris, who says he has been wheelchair-bound for ten years, has now contacted a lawyer and could sue.
Central to his lawsuit will be the shocking YouTube video, filmed on a bystander's phone, which shows how the incident unfolded near the U Street-Cardozo Metro station.
The clip, which has been viewed more than 25,000 times, shows the two cops grab Mr Harris by both arms as he sits in his electric wheelchair, then lift him up and force him to collapse forward.
With blood gushing out of his bruised face, Mr Harris says: ‘What did you do that for? For what?' The cop replies: ‘You’ve got to move on’.
As more officers appear a passer-by shouts out: ‘He’s in a wheelchair! What is going on? This is stupid!’
The video sparked a torrent of support for Mr Harris on YouTube, with one commenter posting: ‘This is a new level of low’.
Glendon007 wrote: ‘Wow, an old handicap man was too awesome for two able bodied cops to handle. What next night sticking babies? Damn disgusting!’
Police claim that they were doing a routine patrol when they saw Mr Harris drinking an alcoholic drink and that he refused to be moved on.
But in an interview with NBC4 he said: ‘I didn't do anything for them to do this to me.
What they did was unnecessary. It was completely unnecessary’.
He was arrested for assault and drinking in public after the incident on Thursday, before being taken to hospital, where he required stitches.
He later appeared on Fox News with a large bandage on the side of his face, and told reporters he felt 'violated.'
A female witness backed up his story and told NBC4: ‘His face was badly injured because of the fall and he lay on the ground with a pool of blood forming underneath him.
‘The crowd were saying put something under his face to stop the bleeding but the cops were doing nothing.
A statement for Washington D.C. Metro Transit Police said Mr Harris ‘resisted arrest which resulted in him falling out of his wheelchair’.
But it said officers were 'following up on the report'.
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