An almost minute-long video of a police officer from Henryetta, Oklahoma, beating a Black man who is on the ground and repeatedly asking the officer to stop had previously gone viral. The clip shows the cop not paying heed to the Black man’s plea to stop while sitting on top of him and punching him in the head.
In the video, the Black man can be heard questioning the cop and asking for help, saying, “What are you doing, bro?! No! Somebody help me!” His pleas for help led to bystanders reaching the scene, which appears to be the parking lot of a Casey’s General Store.
As the people gathered around the cop and the Black man he was beating, some took out their phones and started recording the whole thing, which led to the video being posted on social media on February 9, after which it was reposted on different platforms.
An Officer was spotted brutally assaulting a man in Henryetta, Oklahoma, by repeatedly slamming or punching his head against the concrete. The officer then knelt on the man’s back and placed a hand around his neck to pin him down. The man was yelling things like, ‘Oh my God!… pic.twitter.com/mYIAMPU15Z
— Rain Drops Media (@Raindropsmedia1) February 9, 2026
While the Black man had claimed that he did not do anything as the cop beat him, Henryetta Police Department released the bodycam footage of the incident to KOTV to clarify what happened. According to authorities, the man in question is Ramone Hester, whom police had been looking for about a week because he had an outstanding warrant in connection with a domestic violence case for allegedly punching his girlfriend.
The bodycam footage shows when the cop approached Hester, he refused to comply, which led to the officer tackling him, which also meant that his bodycam fell off. By this time bystanders started to gather on the scene and they might have missed the initial part of the tussle when the officer had tried to arrest Hester first.
Talking to KOTV, Police Chief Steve Norman said that both the bystanders and the people who saw the clip online only witnessed a part of the incident and did not have any clear idea regarding what actually happened.
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He said, “As things move this way, where you only see a certain portion of a video that appears to paint the officer in a negative light but never really have any intentions of watching the entire video for the whole context of the situation or the background of the person you’re dealing with, it’s shallow.”
Norman further added, “All these folks that watched this video, they are all theorists. We are the practitioners of this. And if you’ve never been there, never been in that situation, you don’t know what he’s going through. He then showed support for the officer, saying, “The officer had actually gotten injured when they went to the ground. Since the suspect would not comply, still would not give his hands up, and fearing the fact he may have a weapon, we don’t know, he began to strike him and try to get him to comply.”
Norman also mentioned that Hester had previous encounters with the police and he had shown the same kind of hostility back then as well. According to court records, Hester does have a criminal history and his previous convictions in Oklahoma and Kansas were for possessing stolen property, stealing, and stalking.
