Protesters emerge in Pennsylvania after cop uses knee to restrain man
Protesters kneel in front of the Lehigh County Jail in Allentown, Pa., on Monday.
ALLENTOWN, PA.
Activists against police brutality expressed outrage and demanded accountability Monday after video emerged over the weekend of an officer placing his knee on a man’s head and neck area outside a Pennsylvania hospital.
Allentown police violated their own policy against neck restraints when an officer used his knee to bear down on the man’s head, the activists said, while the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania called it an illegal use of force.
Hundreds of people marched in downtown Allentown on Monday night, calling for the officer to be fired and police funds to be reallocated to education and mental-health and other social services.
“These police officers should not have been restraining him. He needed help,” said protester Maegan Llerena. “Not even two months after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, there was a knee on the neck of a man in front of a hospital. What is that? Can someone explain that to me?”
Police launched an internal probe and promised to release additional video of Saturday’s incident.
The videotaped incident occurred nearly seven weeks after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into the neck of Floyd, a Black man, for nearly nine minutes. Floyd’s death in police custody sparked global protests over police brutality and racial injustice.
“I can’t believe this is really happening now, and here,” said Justan Parker, founder of Allentown-based Black Lives Matter to Lehigh Valley.
The group issued a list of demands, including the release of any police bodycam video of the incident, the suspension of the officers involved, the name and condition of the man, the establishment of a regional criminal-justice review board and a reallocation of police funding.
The bystander video, shot from a passing vehicle and posted on social media, shows Allentown officers restraining the man on the ground outside the emergency room of the Sacred Heart Campus of St. Luke’s Hospital. An officer had his elbow on the man’s neck before switching to a knee to hold him down while other officers restrained his arms.
The man does not appear to be resisting during the video.
In a statement Sunday night, police said officers were outside the hospital for an unrelated matter when they saw a man staggering in the street, vomiting and stopping in the driveway of the ER.
The man began to yell and spit at officers and hospital staff, the statement said, adding the man was “noncompliant which required officers to restrain” him.