A Buffalo police lieutenant has been suspended and an internal affairs investigation is underway after a viral video showed him calling a woman filming him a vulgar term during an incident Sunday in a 7-Eleven parking lot.
Lieutenant Mike DeLong was one of ten officers seen in the video, which captures an incident involving a man in front of the store, which is on Prospect Avenue near D'Youville College.
When DeLong sees the woman filming the scene, he approaches her and begins a conversation with her that she captured on video with her cell phone. When she questions the size of the police response, he tells the woman the man had two crack pipes and had just attacked his mother.
“We have cameras, too,” Delong says, referring to police body cameras.
The woman asks the lieutenant to move, asking for “personal space,” but he refuses, saying "move me." At one point, DeLong calls the woman a “disrespectful little f***ing c**t.”
“You’re going to be viral,” she tells him.
“I don’t care if I go viral,” he responds.
(WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE)
Later in the video, DeLong, whose name tag is clearly visible, asks the woman where she works, saying he’ll go to her workplace and film her.
DeLong was also suspended without pay in 2014 following a domestic incident in Hamburg, according to a WGRZ article.
As of 11 p.m. Monday, the video posted by Ruweyda Ahmed Salim had been seen more than 89,000 times on Facebook and spread quickly across social media. She also posted a photo taken from the inside of her car after the confrontation of DeLong appearing to have pulled her over, writing that the lieutenant "also followed us" and that she was told she was "stopped for valid reasons."
A department spokesperson told WBFO that Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood immediately suspended DeLong after reviewing the video. The suspension needs to go through a signatory process, but will be without pay.
DeLong is the third Buffalo police officer to be suspended this month, following the suspensions of Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe on June 4. The two officers were seen in a viral WBFO video shoving protester Martin Gugino in front of City Hall.
A civilian police dispatcher, Bob Marth, was also suspended earlier this month after putting what Lockwood called a "reprehensible social media post" on Facebook.
