Kansas City brawl footage falsely claimed to show Chicago police
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on April 27, 2023 at 16:41
- 2 min read
- By Natalie WADE, AFP USA
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"Policing Chicago in 2023: Potentially fatal attack, immediately followed by street 'performance,'" says an April 22, 2023 tweet from Stew Peters, a far-right radio show host whom AFP has fact-checked numerous times.
The clip shared in the post and on Instagram shows two uniformed individuals getting into a fracas with several individuals. The authorities pin down a man wearing a yellow and green jersey while a woman attempts to intervene.
The posts come after crowds of teenagers gathered in downtown Chicago on April 14 and 15 turned violent, leading to several arrests and injuries.
But the video shared online is not recent -- and it was not filmed in Chicago.
A reverse image search surfaced several examples of the footage. One appeared to be a screenshot from TikTok saying: "Only in Kansas City, Missouri."
A keyword search for "Kansas City" revealed the video was shared as early as November 22, 2022 on Reddit and YouTube. An article from Fox 4, a local television station, includes the same video Peters shared.
"Video shows Westport security guards caught in fight with visitors," the headline says.
The incident took place in Kansas City’s Westport district after a Chiefs football game on November 20, 2022, according to the article, which gave no explanation for the incident.
Legible in some of the footage is a sign for World Market. AFP geolocated the store's location to the corner of Mill Street and Westport Road.
AFP reached out to the Kansas City Police Department for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.
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