LAPD officer charged with assault in videotaped beating
Clinton Alford Jr. was lying face-down on a South Los Angeles sidewalk, his hands behind his back, when he felt the first kick.

The 22-year-old admitted he didn't remember all of what happened on that October afternoon, just minutes after a police officer yanked him off his bicycle. But he remembered being repeatedly kicked in the head and shocked with an electric stun gun in the back. His body, he said, “flopped like a dead fish.”

“I was just praying to God that they wouldn't kill me,” he said. “I felt that I was going to die. Then I passed out.”

On Monday, Officer Richard Garcia, 34, was charged with one count of felony assault for using what prosecutors described as unlawful force when arresting Alford after he had surrendered.

The decision to file an assault charge is highly unusual for on-duty police officers, who are given broad legal authority to use force. But Garcia's case highlights how prosecutors are more willing to charge a cop when incidents are caught on video, which can then be presented to a jury to provide clarity in the face of conflicting witness accounts.

Garcia is one of three LAPD officers facing assault under color of authority charges in connection with on-duty incidents caught on camera.

Jonathan Lai, 31, was charged last year after he allegedly hit a man with a police baton outside a restaurant near Staples Center in 2012. Prosecutors said footage from the restaurant's security camera showed that the man was on his knees, with his hands on his head, when Lai struck him repeatedly.
Security cameras installation los angeles.