Adonis Tuggle Update: Officer Jon Selke On Leave After Violent Viral Video

How can these crooked cops still get away with arresting Black people for resisting arrest?

Source: Sebastian Condrea / Getty

“He was smothering me, almost as if you were trying to drown somebody underwater,” said Adonis Tuggle, the Black student whose violent arrest was caught on camera in a now-viral video. The Associated Press reports Purdue University officer Jon Selke, who was seen pinning Tuggle to the ground by the throat, is on administrative leave until further notice.

Even though the incident is currently under investigation, that is not why the campus cop is off-duty indefinitely. “Any time a PUPD officer uses force in connection with an arrest, the department conducts an internal review,” campus police Chief John Cox said about the Feb. 4 arrest.

Selke and his Hitler-ish mustache are actually taking a break because he reportedly received death threats, which are also currently under investigation. It’s funny how cops like Selke don’t hesitate to threaten the lives of others, like Tuggle and his girlfriend, but can’t handle it when anyone else keeps that same energy. Selke himself admitted the whole incident was a power trip, saying that young Black man’s real crime was that he didn’t obey to his satisfaction. “He didn’t follow instructions, It was a simple resisting case,” Selke said.

When Selke responded to a neighbor’s call about the couple’s loud argument, Tuggle claims the officer was immediately hostile and cursing at his girlfriend, who is white. Tuggle tried to calm them both down but said the campus cop only escalated from there.

“I told him he had no reason to be disrespectful. He was yelling at her and she was yelling at him. I told my girlfriend to calm down and I heard him scream ‘OK buddy, you’re going down,’ and he threw me against the car,” Tuggle said, describing the terrifying moments leading up to the infamous clip.

Selke can be heard threatening to tase the girlfriend as she recorded the aggressive struggle, begging the officer to stop choking Tuggle.

“Basically, what happened to George Floyd almost happened to me, except I had an elbow not a knee, and fortunately, I’m still breathing instead of being in a casket,” Tuggle said.

Like a lot of cowardly cops who attack Black civilians, he didn’t even pick on someone his own size. The 180-lb student was no match for Selke, who he estimates outweighed him by almost 100 lbs and had a 4-inch height advantage.

“I was still screaming: ‘He has his elbow on my neck,'” Tuggle continued. “He dropped his full weight on my face and neck. In the heat of the moment, the only thing I was thinking about was trying to get this officer off of me.”

Tuggle’s family and civil rights attorney Andrew M. Stroth are calling for a full independent investigation and more consequences than a voluntary vacation for excessive force and violating the 24-year-old’s civil rights. They are also demanding the release of Selke’s bodycam footage from that night and that Tuggle’s charges are dropped for resisting police.