Video of black man’s arrest sparks anger
Many cops wrestle youth into submission using excessive force
New York, March 6: Video showing New York City police officers arresting a young black man sparked outrage and elicited questions about the amount of force used to make the arrest in a city where mistrust of police remains high more than five years after Eric Garner’s death from an officer’s chokehold.
Fitzroy Gayle, 20, pleads for help in the video, recorded by a woman who then tweeted it, as several officers wrestle him into submission on Wednesday evening on a Brooklyn sidewalk. When Gayle asked a lone plainclothes officer why he was being stopped, the officer did not appear to answer before uniformed backup rushed in. Police commissioner Dermot Shea said on Thursday he was ordering an internal investigation.
“This was painful to watch,” Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted. “We still need to get all the facts about this case and a full investigation is underway, but I don’t like what I saw. It doesn’t reflect what we’re building in New York City.”
The city’s largest police union responded on Twitter, calling de Blasio’s remarks “anti-police rhetoric” and accusing him of “inflaming the situation" with a rush to judgment. The man in the video had fled officers who approached him and another man as they were smoking marijuana in a park around 7 p.m., Shea said. The officers were responding to an automated alert to gunshots, Shea said. Both men were later apprehended, but there is no indication they were linked to the gunfire, he said. Gayle was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and marijuana possession.
The second man, whom police have not identified, was issued a summons. The episode is under internal review. Shea said there were “some disturbing points” to the video. One of the officers could be seen standing on the man's ankle, he said, offering a possible explanation for why Gayle screamed during the scrum. — AP