- Video shows the arrest, McDonald's where the incident took place, handgun with illegal extended magazine confiscated
- A man and a woman were arrested at a McDonald's in McFarland where police say they responded to a fight. A search of the man resulted in a confiscated handgun and an illegal extended magazine.
McFarland police responded to this McDonald's after 6 p.m. on Sunday night.
Video circulating on social media shows 21-year-old Francisco Joaquin taken down and hit with a baton by McFarland police officers after they say Joaquin resisted arrest.
Slammed into a parked car and pushed to the ground, the man in the video Francisco Joaquin lay on the pavement after officers asked four people to go outside… including Joaquin.
“Him in the red hoodie he was like why. He wanted to know why. He was like am I being detained?" Witness Jay Medina remembers. "The officer was like come out and you’ll find out like we’ll talk about it outside.”
Medina and her boyfriend Isaiah Camacho were at the restaurant watching the argument unfold.
“The officer didn’t want to tell him, so then he was like I’m not going, and that’s when he walked out and then they started chasing after him and he started running,” Medina said.
According to the McFarland police department, the officers responded to a call about a fight at the location.
When they arrived, the department says Joaquin and 22-year-old Anjanette Garcia refused to comply.
“The cop had his radio, and he was like, 'hey go get him so he went to go get him,” Camacho said.
The McFarland police department says both Joaquin and Garcia resisted arrest while out in the parking lot.
Medina says she felt the most shock after seeing an officer pulling Garcia by her hair to the ground.
“I felt so bad for her, but I didn’t want to get in it because I didn’t want the cops to do anything to me or for them to think I was related to her or anything, so I was like let me document everything,” Medina said.
While recording the video, Medina remembers feeling scared after watching officers hit Joaquin repeatedly and pin down Garcia.
“Her parts came out. She was wearing a shirt so her area was out, and she was asking to be covered. She was like cover me please like she was telling them, and they didn’t cover her, nothing," Medina recalled.
Camacho said seeing something like this for the first time changed how he might react in a similar situation.
“If a cop stops me, I just need to chill,” he said.
The McFarland Police Department declined our request for an on-camera interview at this time, but in a press release, the department says they were assisting the Kern County Sheriff’s Office and the California Highway Patrol in breaking up several attempted street takeovers in the area involving around 200 vehicles, ultimately leading to the incident at the McDonald’s.
According to officers, Joaquin is a documented gang member in Fresno and in a search of Joaquin, police found a handgun with an illegal extended magazine.
Francisco Joaquin and Anjanette Garcia were booked into the Lerdo Justice Facility Center
This investigation is still ongoing.
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