Crown Heights, New York residents are not letting documented police violence pass quietly and will stage a protest on Friday.
A video posted by Arutz Sheva earlier this week documents two police officers punching Ehud HaLevi after they were called to a Brooklyn Jewish community center where he was sleeping.
Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, said the office had opened its own investigation on the “conduct of the police officers in this arrest,” but the police silence after the attack has prompted residents to demonstrate against police brutality, the Chabad Lubavitch Collive website reported.
The initiative was taken by friends of Ehud HaLevi, age 21, who was also arrested after being repeatedly punched on the Jewish holiday of Shmini Atzeres last week.
The 2 p.m. protests will start from the Jewish Children's Museum in the Crown Heights neighborhood on the corner of Kingston Avenue and Eastern Parkway, and conclude at the 71st Precinct, where demonstrators will hold a press conference.
"We are asking everyone to bring respectful signs calling for justice for Ehud," the organizer told the Chabad website. "We are calling for the false criminal charges to be dropped and for the violent officers to be fired and brought to trial."
Security camera footage disputed the two police officers' claims that HaLevi was criminally trespassing and assaulted them, police did not dismiss charges against him of resisting arrest, obstruction and criminal trespass.
He was jailed until Thursday, when his family posted his $1,500 cash bail or bond.