Watch how the mayor of DC defends the police

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- After initially refusing to comment on concerns to a video of police allegedly harassing a D.C. man, Mayor Muriel Bowser is speaking out. The mayor was able to review a video on Wednesday of a D.C. man who was walking home in Ward 8 along Atlantic Street Southwest and MLK Jr. Avenue Southwest.

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After reviewing the video Wednesday afternoon, Mayor Bowser spoke to FOX5's Matt Ackland. "What’s hard to see in the video is what happened before that, and so I can’t tell you if officers were responding to a call, or responding to sounds of gunshots, or responding to a crime nearby," says Bowser. "None of that is known from looking at the video," she says. "What we hear from communities all the time, and unfortunately in an area -- it is reported in the video that this was happening -- we’ve had some violent activity -- we’ve heard sounds of gunshots even, and so it wouldn’t surprise me if our police were following up, so I don’t know what happened."

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The mayor tells FOX 5 she wants to find out more and urges the man who took the video to contact the local police or if he doesn’t feel comfortable talking to officers, he can call the Office of Police Complaints, which is an outside agency. FOX 5 initially reached out to the Mayor's Office on Tuesday, and later spoke to the Mayor that evening, but Mayor Bowser, who said she had not yet seen the video, refused to comment on her concerns, despite being told of the situation. The mayor says D.C. Police Chief Newsham is well aware of the video.

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