A graphic video of a police officer being set on fire by protesters in Mexico has gone viral in light of the ongoing protests against police brutality in the United States. The video is being shared on Twitter by account attempting to pass it off as protesters in America, setting policemen on fire.
Protests have raged in the US after George Floyd, an African-American man, died in police custody in Minneapolis. Floyd's death, along with the deaths of several other African-American people at the hands of the police, has sparked protests across America. Several cities including New York and Seattle saw violent protests with the police resorting to using tear gas and rubber bullets, to clamp down protesters.
The video begins with a police officer getting on a bike. A protestor pours something from a bottle onto the police officer's back and sets it on fire. The police officer gets off the bike and tries to put out the fire by rolling on the ground as other cops and protestors try to help them.
Many verified Twitter handles from the US, have shared the video without mentioning that the incident is from Mexico.
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Radio host Jesse Lee Peterson shared the video on Twitter with the text "Peaceful protest". Former baseball player Aubrey Huff quote tweeted Peterson's tweet and wrote that if he was set on fire, he wouldn't hesitate to shoot the perpetrator.
Conservative podcaster and producer at BlazeTV Elijah Schaffer also tweeted the video. He however clarified in a subsequent tweet that the incident did not take place in the USA.
Archived links of the tweets can be found here, here, here and here.
This tweet falsely stated that the incident happened in Italy.
The video was also shared on Facebook here and here.
Fact Check
Many users replied to the tweets saying that the incident took place in Mexico and not the United States as insinuated. BOOM did a keyword search with "Mexico police officer set on fire" and found multiple reports on the incident.
NBC Philadelphia reported that on June 4 a police officer was set on fire by protesters that broke out in Guadalajara in Jalisco state of Mexico.
BOOM found this video posted by The Telegraph on YouTube. The title of the video is: Police officer set on fire during protests in Mexico.
According to reports, protests have erupted in Mexico against police brutality like in the US. Mexicans are protesting after a construction worker, Giovanni Lopez, was allegedly beaten to death by police officers in town of Ixtlahuacán de Los Membrillos near Guadalajara on May 4 allegedly for not wearing a mask. The incident was caught on camera leading to widespread outrage.
We compared screensots from the news video with the video shared on Twitter and found several similarities. We also found a building C. UNIVERSITARIO AZTECA written on it geo located the same to show that the incident took place on Ave Juarez in Guadalajara.
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Below are the screenshot comparisons. The identifiers are circled in red.
A street view image of the street can be seen below.
Media reports did not identify the police officer set on fire, but said he belonged to a local police unit. The reports following the incident said that the police officer was rushed to the hospital and treated for burns on his neck.