A video of a group of police personnel brutally attacking a person with batons has gone viral on social media, where users are claiming that it shows police personnel in the US attacking a "university student in America who is protesting against global Zionism."
(Note: We have refrained from adding links to the video due to the violent nature of the incident.)
Is it true?: No, the video shows police in Milan, Italy, beating a transgender woman in May 2023.
How did we find out?: Using InVID, a video verification extension on Google Chrome, we divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran reverse image searches on one of them.
On Google, we came across Italian news organisation L'Unione Sarda's report, which carried the same video in a report published on 24 May 2023.
The video showed police personnel in Milan attacking a transgender woman, it said, after parents of children attending a local school alleged that the woman was "harassing the children at the entrance."
More reports: With keywords like "milan police attack transgender person," we looked for more information regarding the incident in the video.
As per a EuroNews report, the victim was a Brazilian national, who was kicked, pepper sprayed, and beaten, despite not showing resistance.
She sued the Italian police for torture and bodily harm, her lawyer told American magazine Barron's, identifying her as 41-year-old Bruna.
A spokesperson for the police union told a local newspaper that the officers in the video were not trying to hurt her, but only wanted to "subdue" her as she had been spitting blood in their faces, Barron's added.
Conclusion: An unrelated video from Milan, Italy is being falsely linked to the student-led pro-Palestine protests in universities across the USA.
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