Shocked bus passengers have captured the moment a group of ticket checkers pinned a young man to the ground after he allegedly attacked a police officer.
Public Transport Victoria (PTV) officers restrained the 24-year-old man on the 601 bus from Huntingdale to Monash in the city’s south-east on Wednesday.
Police were called to Huntingdale train station where they found five officers still holding the man, who was from Ivanhoe East in the city’s northeast.
Initial reports indicate that he allegedly assaulted an authorized officer.
The man has been released, but is expected to remain that way charged upon summons. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Social media users, lacking the context of the man’s alleged assault, assumed he had simply forgotten to touch his MyKi card at the start of the trip.
“Poor guy didn’t tap MyKi,” one user wrote in the caption of a video showing the man pinned to the ground on the floor of a bus.
Others who viewed the video criticized the officer’s “excessive” use of force, but also admitted they did not have the full context.
Shocked passengers on a Melbourne bus captured the moment ticket inspectors pinned a man to the ground after he allegedly attacked a worker (pictured)
Video footage shows five PTV officers restraining a 24-year-old man on bus 601 from Huntingdale to Monash in the city’s southeast on Wednesday (pictured)
“Look, we obviously don’t have the full context here… But why are those damn ticket inspectors dressed like they’re part of some tactical unit,” someone asked.
‘These muppets have no training in how to safely restrain and arrest people.”
‘Five against one? Is the student [Mike] Tyson,” another wondered.
“Anyone defending this s*** needs to get their head checked,” a third added.
The Transport (Compliance and Miscellaneous) Act allows authorized officers to arrest a person if the officer believes on reasonable grounds that the arrest is necessary.
These grounds may include the maintenance of public order, the prevention of the continuation or recurrence of a criminal offense and the safety of members of the public or of the individual.
Section 462A of the Crimes Act 1958 allows authorized officers to use proportionate force to arrest someone who commits an offence.
Authorized officers (pictured in Melbourne) may make arrests to keep the peace, but their rules require them to use the least amount of force possible
However, the law’s arrest procedures require officers to recognize “the seriousness of depriving a person of liberty and whether an arrest of a person by an authorized officer would be necessary.”
Officers must ensure that all other options for dealing with the situation have been exhausted and that any arrest is made ‘discreetly and unobtrusively’.
What counts as a reasonable arrest depends on the individual circumstances of each case involving the officer to justify that the force used was necessary and not excessive.
Victorian Police have urged anyone with information or images of what happened to contact Crime Stoppers immediately.