Sacramento Police call the actions of one of their officers "disturbing" and do not appear to be reasonable based on the circumstances.
Those actions were caught by two cameras: his own dash cam and one on the cell phone of a witness.
The dashcam captures a man jaywalking across a residential street. It shows the police cruiser pull up near the man on foot. The officer gets out of the car, asks the man, now known to be Nandi Cain Jr. to take his hands out of his pockets. The man holds his hands up and appears challenge the officer's right to stop him.
The confrontation moves into the street with officer repeatedly asking the man to get down or threatening to throw him down.
A PT cruiser pulls up with two women inside and one of them records what happens next.
You see Cain pull his jacket off and the the officer grabs him by the neck, tackles him to the ground, and punches him. Within a few seconds another officer arrives to help restrain Cain with another handful of officers not long after.
"I thought I was going to be the next Trayvon Martin,” Cain tells CBS 13 in Sacramento . "I thought as soon as they got me on the ground and start putting my arms in different positions, I felt like they were going to draw a gun out and shoot me in the back."
Cain says he pulled his jacket off to show that he wasn't armed. But a police spokesman says they interpreted the move to be a challenge to fight.
The officer who stopped Cain has been placed on paid administrative leave and a criminal investigation into his actions has been launched.
Cain was originally charged with resisting arrest. Finding insufficient grounds for a criminal complaint, the charge was dropped.