There's a doozy of a story to go with the Evanston, Illinois, police dashcam video above. From a Chicago Fox affiliate:

On October 10, 2015, Lawrence Crosby was working on his car around 7:00 PM when a woman passing by saw what she thought was an African American man breaking into a vehicle and stealing it ... The dashcam video shows him get out with his hands up with a cellphone in his hand and he then gets taken down by officers who thought they were dealing with someone who stole a car.

“On the ground... on the ground... down on the ground... down on the ground...turn around,” the officers can be heard yelling as they knee Crosby to bring him to the ground and then punch him.

To repeat, the vehicle that Crosby was suspected of "stealing" was his own car. Evanston Police, meanwhile, have released their own recorded statement in which an officer makes the astounding claim that Crosby—who in the video is swarmed, taken down, and repeatedly punched by six police officers almost immediately after exiting his car—can be seen "actively resisting arrest" in the dashcam tape. Per Fox, Crosby was prosecuted for resisting arrest but charges were dismissed by a judge.

The story notes—and Northwestern University's website confirms—that Crosby is a doctoral candidate in engineering. He studies "nanoparticles and oxide surface interactions for applications in catalysis and energy-related applications."

Crosby has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Evanston and four of its officers.