A man who was filming police early Sunday morning in downtown Austin, Texas, had his phone snatched from his hands by a cop just seconds before another pepper-sprayed him in the face.
Footage of the incident, which contains explicit language, shows Austin police on horseback forcing a crowd back after they've made an arrest. Several people can be seen filming the police with their cell phones.
One of the officers grabs the cell phone of a man standing on the perimeter of the crowd. Then, another officer hits the man with pepper spray.
"They sprayed the guy who had phone taken, and the female officer who had the phone threw it back at him before riding away," the man who took the video, Jericho Tucker, told KVUE.
Tucker did not immediately return a request for comment from The Huffington Post.
In a statement sent to HuffPost, the Austin Police Department said it is "aware of this incident and is conducting a review to determine if the officers' conduct is compliant with our policy."
It's generally legal for members of the public to film police officers.
"There are First Amendment protections for people photographing and recording in public,” Mickey Osterreicher, an attorney with the National Press Photographers Association, told HuffPost last year. Osterreicher noted that as long as you don't get in their way, it's legal to take pictures or film police anywhere in the country.
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