Austin X Games Weekend: Cops Pepper Spray Man For Recording Arrest

Austin police are coming under fire for a video that surfaced Sunday of a man being pepper sprayed for filming a police arrest in progress. The confrontation took place as the Texas capital city hosted the annual extreme sporting event, the X Games.

The video going viral around the web was shot by out-of-towner Jericho Tucker, a “game player and entertainer,” who attended the X Games from Los Angeles. Around 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning, Tucker whipped out his phone in the midst of what he described as “someone [getting] tackled by a single police officer (he looked a bit young to be drinking) and then this.”

By “this” Jericho refers to the controversial part of the video — when another spectator filming the incident was pepper sprayed by a member of the Austin Police Department as another officer on horseback took his phone away. As Tucker writes, you can watch below to “Make your own judgment,” before adding “Sorry for the language.” As of now, the video has been seen by over 109,000 viewers.

The area of Austin where the video took place, 6th Street, is generally known for its reputation of heavy drinking, especially for college students and visitors for high-profile events like the X Games. Although the reasoning for the initial subject of the arrest remains unclear, some, like Tucker, have speculated that it may have been for underage consumption. Austin PD has released a statement saying that it “is aware of this incident and is conducting a review to determine if the officers’ conduct is compliant with our policy,” reported the Austin American-Statesmen.

Earlier this week, Texas was also the site of another incident that caused public uproar other than the X Games pepper spray video. In the Dallas area, a video surfaced that showed a cop brutally cuffing a young girl while breaking up a pool party, as previously reported Inquisitr. In that video, the girl “screams in agony” as the cop forces his knee into her back. The following video also contains graphic language.

Since returning home from the X Games, Jericho has stayed active on Twitter with updates of how the story has unfolded. Several major networks are currently running the story, but Tucker says he hopes to remain objective and as little a part of the story as possible.

So I did a few interviews and tried to keep any info not related to the event off the conversation. Hope it comes out okay honestly.

— Jericho – Tucker (@IIJERiiCHOII) June 7, 2015

They all wanted me to give opinions and crap, tried to stay away from it, though.

— Jericho – Tucker (@IIJERiiCHOII) June 7, 2015

Were you in Austin, Texas, for the X Games this weekend? Did you hear about the pepper spraying incident?

[Image via YouTube]