Video: New York Police Rough Up Man On Subway — Just For Sleeping On Way Home From Work?

New York Police officers arrest and rough up a man on a subway train in a disturbing video uploaded Wednesday to YouTube. When the victim demands to know why he’s being arrested, the cops won’t tell him. In the video, the only reason the man can think of is that he fell asleep on the subway car on his way home from work.

[Be warned: The video contains spoken profanity.]

The new video was uploaded by a YouTube user with the user name 60thStreetWatch, and was reportedly shot in the 57th Street subway station in Midtown Manhattan.

The Free Thought Project online site, which frequently publicizes videos involving apparent police misconduct and other seeming violations of personal liberty by government authorities, then reposted the cell phone video.

Though the 57th Street stop is normally a busy one, like all train stops in Midtown Manhattan, the subway car on which this incident occurs appears largely empty, suggesting that the incident took place early in the morning. The man, who tells the officers that he fell asleep on the way home from work, is possibly a night-shift worker taking the train home in after an overnight shift.

Otherwise, few details are available about the incident recorded on cell phone video by an onlooker.

The understandably upset man may not have known the altercation was being filmed because he pleads with other riders to record what’s happening, and suggests that the officers mistook him for a homeless person, because he fell asleep.

“Record all of this please!” he pleads. “I’m coming home from work, and they’re f****** with me because I’m sleeping, and bums gotta sleep on the train.”

As can be seen in the video, though the man on the train resists being handcuffed — and it takes four officers to finally bring him down — he never actually fights back, lashes out physically or violently threatens the New York Police officers. Instead, he protests, “I just wanna go home!”

At one point, a female officer appears to strike the man on the back with her baton.

A female onlooker attempts to intervene, trying to make her own recording of the incident and telling the officers that she has taken their badge numbers, even yelling out the numbers themselves.

As the New York Police officers finally remove the man from the train, the woman warns them, “I got all ya’ll, and I got your f****** badge numbers!”

Sleeping on subway trains, even while snoring, is not illegal in New York City, unless it becomes “hazardous” or begins “interfering with fellow passengers,” both of which seem unlikely given that there were few other passengers on board the subway car.