St. Paul police investigate YouTube video of apparent assaults

Assault
In this still clip taken from a video posted to YouTube, a young man lowers his shoulder and strikes a man in the back, knocking him to the ground along the sidewalk. St. Paul police are investigating video, which also shows alleged assaults on bicyclists and children.
YouTube

St. Paul police say they're investigating a series of apparent random assaults by a group of young men in the Twin Cities, videotaped and posted to YouTube.

Police spokesman Paul Schnell said St. Paul residents started emailing and calling about the video this morning, after seeing the six-and-a-half minute tape on the video sharing website. Some of the locations appear to be in St. Paul.

The video shows a series of young men repeatedly pushing down bicyclists, children and pedestrians, apparently at random. The video was removed from YouTube shortly after noon on Tuesday.

It isn't clear if anyone is hurt or if the incidents were ever reported to police. Some of the apparent perpetrators are identified by name.

"There is great concern. You can't watch the video and not feel a sense of outrage, that what you're seeing in the video is actually occuring, and there's no reason to believe it's not," Schnell said.

Minneapolis police spokesman Jesse Garcia says his department is also aware of the tape and that investigators are looking at it. The video shows incidents in locations that appear to be in that city, possibly on the bike trail on the Greenway.