Screenshot/YouTube
A screenshot from the video.
On Monday afternoon, an officer pulled an unnamed Uber driver over for a traffic violation and then went on an angry tirade, making fun of the Uber driver's broken English and mocking him.
The entire interaction was filmed by the Uber driver's passenger, Sanjay Seth, and was uploaded to YouTube.
"Police abuse of Uber driver in New York City," Seth says in the video's description. "In an unmarked car, the policeman was allegedly attempting to park without using his blinker at a green light. (His reverse lights weren't on. Likely double parked without hazards on.) The Uber driver pulled around and gestured that he should use his blinker, casually and non-offensively, and kept driving us. The policeman quickly pulls up behind us and this is what happens."
Police sources confirmed to the New York Daily News that the officer, Patrick Cherry, is a detective who works for the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The NYPD confirmed to Business Insider that the officer in the video has been identified as an NYPD detective.
"This investigation has been referred to the Internal Affairs Bureau and CCRB," a spokesperson told Business Insider.
Cherry says to the driver: "I don't know where you're coming from, where you think you're appropriate in doing that; that's not the way it works. How long have you been in this country?"
The unmarked car Cherry used to pull over the Uber driver doesn't belong to the NYPD, the Daily News reports. Cherry was on his way to work after seeing another police officer, who was in the hospital.
The three-minute interaction, in which the driver responds calmly to Cherry, ends when Cherry says he won't arrest the driver because he's "not important enough."
The Uber driver filed a complaint after the incident, the Daily News says.
We've reached out to Uber for comment and will update this post when we hear back.
You can watch the full video of the interaction below (the video contains graphic language):