this disabled elderly man was riding his bike without lights on at night in st augustine florida which is a noncriminal infraction where the first offense doesn't even come with a fine much less jail but that didn't stop this sheriff's deputy from grabbing him and slamming him to the ground why are you pulling me over for your lights you don't have any lights on your bike put the bike down put your hands behind your back let me see your face you know what you slam me for no reason well i warned you that that was going to happen you're not a young man i didn't want to do that to you but you really gave me no choice i don't mean that offensively but like how old are you once we go to the ground is paperwork and they're laughing at and mocking the senior citizen that they just helped arrest literally justice he said literally conference so if a police officer thinks that an elderly man on a bicycle didn't listen to him is it lawful to just slam him to the ground to analyze this we look at the graham factors the first of which is the severity of the crime at issue the whole point here is for the courts to have a way to determine whether or not a police officer acted reasonably it would be much less reasonable for a police officer to slam somebody to the ground over a noncriminal bicycle infraction as opposed to say somebody suspected of robbing a 7-eleven doing some research i pretty quickly found that the charge he ended up getting charged with specifically resisting arrest or obstructing arrest without violence has been explicitly found by the 11th circuit to be not a serious crime for which severe force is warranted the guy had a bicycle he got off the bicycle and he's walking the bicycle while the officer is guiding him with his clenched fist on his clothing he's making no attempt to run he didn't attempt to run on the bicycle he's not actively resisting or fighting in any way passive resistance such as not obeying commands does not entitle an officer to jump to slamming an elderly man's head on the ground at the end of the day because he wasn't using lights on his bicycle he spent 24 nights in jail you can help by watching and sharing this footage and i'll also attach this man's gofundme if you want to help financially [Music]