LUBBOCK, Texas -
Eliseo Padilla III was arrested Saturday on three counts of assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest. A video of the arrest was posted on social media later Saturday morning and -- as of Sunday night -- had more than 250 thousand views and more than nine thousand shares on Facebook.
"You hear about all this stuff happening like everywhere in the U.S. but you never expect it to hit so close and literally be right in front of you in a matter of seconds," Kianah Cantu, who posted the video, said.
Cantu said she saw an officer involved in an altercation with a man who, she said, did not do anything wrong.
"They were talking normal, you know, I guess the cop just went and asked him what the issue was," she said. "I didn't know that they had initially been called out because there was some instances going on inside, but when he was talking to the cop, you know he was fine, he wasn't yelling because I was probably about 30 feet away from him, so if he was yelling, I obviously would've heard him. But I could hear, he was talking and he had his receipt out, so that's why I assumed, oh maybe something happened inside, maybe they messed up his order and he got mad. The officer pushed him in the car, tried to restrain him, the man started yelling and he was like, it's just my phone, it's just my phone, it's not a gun."
Cantu admitted she didn't have all the facts, but said the officers did not do anything to deescalate the situation.
"I can say I witnessed it first hand, it's just, I felt like it could've been handled differently," Cantu said. "You know, Lubbock Police Department has the best training academy in the state and I'm sure they've trained on all this stuff and I just felt like it definitely could've been handled better."
LPD Chief Greg Stevens said Sunday he has seen Cantu's video, as well as the officers' body camera footage, and said he is OK with his officers decisions.
In a phone call with FOX34, Stevens said the witness does not know the full context, like the call officers received or what led up to the confrontation. Stevens said the officer's intuition made him feel threatened and when he tried to search Padilla, he attacked the officer. Investigators report Padilla had a large knife in his pocket as well as a ski mask and a rifle in his truck, proving that officer's gut instinct was spot on.
Stevens also said it is disheartening that Cantu went straight to social media to try and create an inflammatory situation, but Cantu said her decision to post the video was not a knee-jerk reaction..
"I slept on it, and it kinda' weighed on my heart a little bit," she said. "I need to put that out there, you know, that man is somebody's father, somebody's brother, and I can just imagine what just how he's feeling."
"Like I said, I didn't know details about his background," she continued, "whether he was drunk or anything like that but that's still a person, he's a human being."
Stevens said, if you ever see any officers engaging in misconduct or have any concerns about excessive force, you can call LPD's Internal Affairs department at anytime. You can find that contact information on LPD's website.
