An Oklahoma City police officer is under investigation and on paid leave following the release of body camera footage that shows him slamming an elderly Vietnamese man to the ground during a traffic stop. The man suffered a brain bleed and remains hospitalized after the incident.
The footage shows the Oct. 27 event that begins with Officer Joseph Gibson explaining to 70-year-old Lich Vu that he was being issued a ticket for an improper U-turn.
There appears to be a language barrier between the two as they argue over whether Vu would sign the citation. Vu eventually exits the car and the argument continues.
Gibson insists that if Vu won’t sign the ticket, he’ll be taken to jail.
“I’m ready to go to jail,” Vu said.
They continue arguing and Vu appears to tell Gibson to “shut up” while tapping the officer’s chest with the back of his fingers.
That prompts Gibson to slam Vu to the ground.
A woman, who had earlier in the video identified herself as Vu’s wife, asks Gibson to call an ambulance as the officer continues to put handcuffs on a seemingly unresponsive Vu.
Vu’s daughter posted to Instagram that her father was frail and already in ailing health before the slamming incident — suffering from bone cancer —and that the force of the shove left Vu with a broken neck.
“This is not how you treat someone that is 5’3, 115 lbs with bone cancer after a car accident,” Teresa Vu wrote on Oct. 28, alongside pictures that showed Vu’s head bloodied, dented and bruised.
“Especially if English is their second language,” she added. “I will never forget this, especially if my dad cannot recover and passes away.”
In an update earlier this month, the daughter shared that Vu was still in the hospital and was on a feeding tube and suffering from memory loss.
“He’s conscious now; he can speak and recognize people. Sometimes he gets frustrated because he can’t remember why he’s there or how he got there, which is understandable. He can’t swallow anything properly because of his neck fracture,” she wrote on Nov. 6.
“He still has a little bit of bleeding/blood leftover from his brain bleed,” she said, adding that he had surgery scheduled for later in the week.
The Oklahoma City Police Department said in a statement that an internal investigation into the incident began “immediately” and that Gibson, a six-year veteran on the force, would be on paid leave until the investigation was completed.
Speaking to Oklahoma City’s News 9 on Wednesday, Police Chief Ron Bacy said there was no timeline on when the investigation would be completed, but that officers were working quickly to reach a conclusion in the matter.
“I think anyone can acknowledge that the video is disturbing, and we understand the community’s concerns,” he said.
“As chief of police, my job is to ensure a fair and thorough investigation to provide due process for all involved parties,” Bacy said, dismissing concerns that it could be unfair to have officers investigating one of their own colleagues.
“It’s going to be forwarded to and reviewed by a prosecuting authority, which is completely independent from the police department, and they will make an assessment on that on their own,” he said.