YouTube has suspended the Los Angeles Police Department’s channel after a video showing a brutal attack was taken down. 

LAPD originally said that their account had been “temporarily suspended after [posting] a video of a brutal attack” in the department’s Pacific Division shortly before 11:45 a.m. Saturday morning.  

“We have appealed the suspension and have been denied,” LAPD said in their post to X, formerly Twitter. 

According to the department, they had been asking the public’s help in identifying the suspects. 

The “brutal attack” in question was a Sept. 28 incident in which a male victim encountered two other men walking with bicycles near the intersection of Speedway and Market Street when one of the two men with bicycles swung a pair of bolt cutters at the victim, repeatedly punched and kicked him then calmly walked away before confronting the victim again and knocking him unconscious with the bolt cutters.

Social media users were quick to reply to the LAPD’s announcement of the ban, with some praising YouTube for taking the channel down, while others felt as if the department should not have been suspended at all. 

Now that the LAPD’s “public platform typically used for Critical Incident Community Briefings” is banned for the time being, all briefings will be posted on www.LAPDonline.org