Update: Full video of Columbia police officer punching suspect in night club brawl released

Columbia police officer Tyrone Pugh is back on the job, cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s office following an investigation into a Jan. 18 incident caught on video outside a downtown Columbia nightclub.

Findings of the investigation by the State Law Enforcement Division were made public Tuesday by Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook.

While not charged in the incident, Pugh and another officer were disciplined. Pugh, an eight year veteran with the Columbia Police Department, was suspended without pay for two days for “unnecessary force and unsatisfactory performance.” The other unnamed officer had a letter placed in his personnel file for not completing appropriate paperwork about the incident, Holbrook said.

Pugh and four other off-duty Columbia police officers were working security at Columbia Soundstage at 1800 Blanding St., which was hosting a birthday party. At about 2 a.m. a fight broke out after the nearly 300 party-goers spilled out onto the sidewalk outside of the venue.

A cell-phone video, which became public later that day, showed Pugh yell “Stay on the ground!” to a man he had on the ground. Pugh appears to strike the prone man with what appears to be his fists several times. The young woman who took the video, identified as Robyn Hogg, is shouting repeatedly, “Why are you punching him?”

Pugh was put on administrative leave without pay and SLED was asked to investigate.

Chief Holbrook said a longer video that surfaced during the investigation shed light on Pugh’s actions.

The longer video shows the man Pugh detained was one of the fight’s aggressors and that “Pugh struck the man four times in the upper body in order to cause the subject to release his grip on Pugh and comply with handcuffing,” Holbrook said.

The incident occurred amid a national debate about the need for body cameras on police officers.

“This certainly makes it clear why we need body cameras,” state Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, a defense attorney who has represented clients in prominent self-defense cases said after the incident.

Cellphone videos shot by civilians can be useful, Rutherford said, but they only tell part of the story because “you don’t know what happened before and after the video.”

Drayon Jermel Holmes, 24, and Jonathan David Kennedy, 23, were charged with fighting following the January 18 brawl.

This story was originally published July 14, 2015 at 6:33 PM.