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A video from a May 25, 2022, incident resurfaced on social media this week, showing a white man unleashing a racist tirade inside a Georgia Target store before being arrested for spitting on officers who were called to defuse the situation.
The entire incident was captured on police bodycam footage, which has gone viral on social media in recent days.
The video starts out inside a Target store in Athens, where an old man wearing a red Georgia Bulldogs cap is facing off with an officer with his arms folded.
He identified himself as Hank Blair Wittenberg, although there was no confirmation whether this was his real name.
The cop behind the bodycam identified himself as an officer with the Clark County Police Department, but that’s when the suspect tried to challenge his jurisdiction.
“So you don’t work for the sheriff’s department?” the man asked.
“No, I work for Clark County Police Department,” the officer replied.
“There is such a thing?” the man asked skeptically, trying to say the store was in an unincorporated area where the officer’s authority didn’t apply.
“No, I have jurisdiction in all of Clark County, though,” the officer corrected him.
After a beat, the man asked, “Are you going to take me to jail?”
To this, the officer explained that he was called to the store on a complaint that the man had been acting disorderly and targeting other customers with racial slurs.
The man denied the charges by shaking his head no, then briefly told the officer a sob story about needing his medication from the pharmacy or else he would need to have his foot amputated. He then turned it back on the officer, asking, “Do you trust me?” After this, he said, “United States Navy veteran, and don’t you forget it.”
The officer stayed calm, replying, “OK.”
The old man then proceeded to list his military record and career achievements, attempting to impress the officer but also insulting him by saying, “You were probably in diapers,” implying that the officer’s youth made him unqualified to question someone older.
From there, he dismissively referred to the officer as a “youngin” and followed up with a curt, “Are we done?” The officer responded firmly, “No, not yet.”
The old man quickly followed up with, “Lemme leave.”
The officer said, “No, not yet.”
At that moment, the older man extended both fists in front of him and said, “Take me to jail,” signaling he was prepared to be handcuffed.
Moments earlier, a second officer entered the scene, and the bodycam footage switched to her perspective, capturing the old man from behind. As he turned to face her, she greeted him with a simple “hello,” but he quickly showed he was in no mood for pleasantries, saying, “Hey, ni—er,” leaving the female cop stunned. All she could say was, “Oh, OK.”
The male officer cut in, “Let’s not go there, OK?”
The old man grew even more defiant, repeating the racial slur and challenging the officer, saying, “If you don’t like it, take me to jail. Take me to jail, bud.”
He turned back to the female cop, asking, “What are you gonna do, ni—er?”
The male officer warned the old man to calm down as the confrontation caused an embarrassing scene near the store’s front entrance.
“I need you to stop acting disorderly in public, please,” he said.
That’s when the female officer quietly suggested they “take him for disorderly” because kids were in the store, witnessing aggressive misconduct.
However, the male officer still tried to give the old man another chance to straighten up his act.
“Are you gonna stop?” the officer asked, but the old man just shrugged as if unsure of what he’d do next. He brushed aside his offensive behavior, claiming he was only there to pick up his medication. He then turned back to the female officers and mouthed the N-word instead of saying it out loud. The male officer, growing firmer, warned him again, “You’re going to go to jail” if he kept playing games.
But the man defiantly mouthed the slur once more, and the next sound that followed was the unmistakable cranking of handcuffs tightening around his wrists.
After the old man was subdued, he began to resist the officer’s grip and could be heard hacking and spitting in the male officer’s face. In response, the officer grabbed the back of his neck to prevent him from turning around and doing it again.
This happened after the female officer walked away briefly to meet with store managers to ask if they wanted to bar the unruly old man from the store for good.
Back at the scene, the male officer told her, “He just spit in my face,” as he forcibly led the man out of the store.
The old man kept repeating, “Police brutality!”
Fed up, the male officer told the old man to “shut up” twice, then ordered him to “Sit down” in the back of the squad car.
Before putting the old man in the back of the squad car, the officers searched him, and the female officer cautioned, “If you spit on my officer again, we’re gonna add additional charges, you understand that?”
A store employee came forward outside to inform the man he would be banned from the store for two years.
The officers then snatched off the man’s ball cap and placed a spit mask over his head. The male officer returned to his unit to wipe his face with hand sanitizer.
On the ride to jail, the old man can be heard taunting the female officer with racial slurs from the back seat.
“Did you eat too much watermelon last night? Is that what it is?” he remarked, drawing on a tired stereotype about Black people.
The video then cuts to the county lockup, where jail staff can be heard yelling at the old man after experiencing his uncooperative behavior firsthand.
“The more you raise hell, the less we’re going to do for you; you’re not gonna get nothing until we get you booked in!” a Black correction officer shouted at the old man in his holding cell, waving his finger.
“Do you want me to pay you in watermelon,” the old man asked facetiously, triggering another outburst from the correctional officer, but the video cuts away just as he was about to unleash his frustration on the suspect.
The videos are posted as a series on TikTok but appear in reverse order, meaning Part 3 comes first and Part 1 comes last.
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