City will investigate arrest of black man for dancing on street
Alameda police have released body camera footage of a confrontation with a black man who was toppled and handcuffed by officers after they approached him for dancing in the street.
City officials are starting an independent investigation of the 7:45 a.m. May 23 incident that began after a woman called to report “an African American person in the middle of the street ... dancing and turning all around — obviously something’s very wrong, and I’m just afraid.” Police posted a recording of the call online.
The bodycam footage shows police coming upon the man, identified in police reports as 44yearold Mali Watkins, doing what one officer described as “jazzercise” to a Mary J. Blige song. He was standing in the roadway close to the curb on the 2000 block of Central Avenue.
In what started as a calm exchange with officers, Watkins explained that he did not want to dance on the sidewalk, for fear he would hit other people when practicing moves. The officers detained Watkins, with two grabbing his arms and pinning him to the back of a car after he refused to answer questions. He said he wanted to go to his car and demanded they stop touching him, according to the video. He also can be heard speaking to a woman off camera encouraging her to record what’s happening. He told officers he lived nearby.
Within minutes, three officers pushed Watkins to the ground and handcuffed him, as bystanders yelled in the background, the video shows. “He didn’t do anything,” one woman yelled. Watkins was arrested on charges of resisting the police. An Alameda spokeswoman said the city has begun a process to drop those charges.
City Manager Eric Levitt said he became concerned about how the situation was handled after Alameda residents posted videos on social media Tuesday. He said an independent investigation is starting.
“When the video was brought to my attention Tuesday, we were already dealing with the issue,” Levitt said in an interview Saturday. “The video brought up new facts that I wasn’t aware of.”
Levitt declined to go into detail and said he didn’t know whether the officers involved were placed on leave.
Alameda Vice Mayor John Knox White sharply condemned the arrest on Saturday. “I am outraged and I am sad and I am committed to ensuring that there is a full, independent investigation and that there is accountability for those involved, including those who created a system that allowed this to happen,” he wrote in a statement.
The videos and recording also alarmed LaDoris Cordell, a retired Superior Court judge and independent police auditor for San Jose.
“This is a black man’s worst nightmare,” Cordell said. “Right here. Here it is.”
She noted how quickly the situation unraveled from the beginning, when several police officers surrounded a man who appeared to merely be exercising in the parking lane outside his house. A minute after approaching Watkins, they detain him — a form of custody that police use when they suspect someone of committing a crime.
“But what’s the crime?” Cordell asked. “The crime is that
“I am committed to ensuring that there is ... accountability for those involved, including those who created a system that allowed this to happen.”
John Knox White, Alameda vice mayor
he’s a black man wearing all black in the street.”
Similar scenes take place throughout the nation each day, she said, pointing to the reckoning that’s occurring right now, as protesters face off with police.
“We’re saying, ‘Do you get it now?’ ”
Charles “Sid” Heal, a retired commander from the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department who specializes in use of force, said officers face a quandary when they respond to calls about odd behavior. Police are obligated to “handle the situation to its conclusion,” Heal said, meaning they cannot walk away until they are satisfied a person is safe and will not harm other people.
The Alameda Police Department’s use of force policy allows officers to use “reasonable force” to make an arrest, prevent a suspect from escaping or overcome resistance. Officers are advised to consider a suspect’s comportment, mental capacity, and use of drugs or alcohol, as well as the immediacy or severity of a threat to police, among other factors, when determining whether force is reasonable.
A Police Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Levitt said in a written statement that he had consulted with the head of the police officers association, who shared city leaders’ interest in “addressing concerns brought forward by the community.”
Heal worries, however, that viral videos of police encounters, such as the one in Alameda, will ultimately have a chilling effect on law enforcement.
To Cordell, they illustrate the need for a different kind of policing — in which officers patrol by walking through neighbors and getting to know people, rather than driving up and acting on kneejerk impulses.
The correct way to handle that call would be for one officer to approach Watkins and say, “I’m sorry to bother you, but we got this call,” she said. If officers did community policing, she said, “They’d already know he (Watkins) lived on Central Avenue. They’d wave to him” and be on their way.