A knife-wielding man wasn’t going down without a fight — and an NYPD cop was there to give it to him.
A video released Thursday shows two plainclothes officers in Harlem trying to arrest Saykou George, who has two outstanding warrants and a record of assault.
But as George apparently resists arrest and tries to stalk off, one of the cops has to resort to putting up his fists to keep him from fleeing along Fredrick Douglass Boulevard.
Meanwhile, the other officer, a woman, tries to grab the hulking George and slap cuffs on him, but he keeps resisting, according to the video.
Amid tense police-community relations — and with the bystander taking the video shouting over and over, “I got everything on camera” — the male cop keeps up the fight.
The woman calls for backup — and within 30 seconds, uniformed officers arrive on the scene to subdue George.
Commissioner Bill Bratton defended the officers, who made the bust on Wednesday.
“You have no right, no right under New York law, to resist arrest, which was going on, based on what I’m seeing in that video,” Bratton said.
“The Internal Affairs group will now be reviewing the video, as we always do. But in my preliminary review of that, I saw nothing inappropriate with the officers’ behavior.”
The eight-minute video begins with George, clad in a red shirt and shorts, handing his ID to the plainclothes officers on a sidewalk.
The two cops had seen him carrying the blade in plain sight, cops said, and approached him.
As the male officer holds the ID, George begins flailing his arms while demanding that the officer hand it back.
“You can’t do that to me. I gotta go take my medicine and stuff,” George shouts as onlookers level verbal abuse at the officers.
George keeps mouthing off and gets into a shoving match with the male officer while attempting to storm away.
The cop assumes a boxing-type stance and hits George, who continues to resist.
George raises his own fists and the two engage briefly in fisticuffs until the bust is made.
George, 30, was hit with charges that included assault on a police officer, resisting arrest and criminal possession of a weapon.
