Video shows white man with hand around Black man’s neck as he calls 911 over bike
Milwaukee police say they are investigating a viral social media video depicting a white man with one of his hands around the neck of a frightened Black man while calling 911 about a neighbor’s stolen bicycle.
A police spokesperson on Monday said officers know the 62-year-old white man’s identity but didn’t release his name, saying the investigation into the case was ongoing and that its findings would be forwarded to state prosecutors for review of potential charges.
The spokesperson would not confirm or deny the name widely circulated on social media as belonging to the white man seen on video with a hand wrapped around the neck of a Black man, age 24, who is riding a bicycle that doesn’t match the color of the one that the older man purports was stolen.
But the video of the 10 October confrontation in question shows the white man giving his address. And public records verify that a man by the same name and of the same age as the one identified widely online is listed as a resident of that address.
That man didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment from the Guardian.
The video at the heart of the case shows the man wrapping his left hand around the neck of the younger Black man while holding a cellphone with his right hand. The man, speaking into the phone, accuses the man he is holding of stealing a bicycle out of a friend’s yard.
The Black man looks at the man recording the video – who is also Black – with an expression full of fear and denies stealing the bike. He is on a blue bicycle, and the white man describes the stolen bike as a green one.
The man recording tells the man he is on video and warns him to let go of the other man.
“I’m recording you – let go of the man’s neck,” the person holding the cellphone camera says. The white man responds, “Go ahead, record,” before letting go and flipping a middle finger at the camera.
As the man being held continues maintaining his innocence, the white man changes his story to the person on the phone, who appears to be a 911 operator.
“This kid over here – one of his friends stole a bike right out of a friend of mine’s yard,” the man said.
The man recording the video tells a boy on a black-and-white bicycle who approaches the scene to go get the family of the man whose neck was being held. The recorder tells the man, “You ain’t got to touch his neck like that.”
The video clip ends just shy of the two-minute mark. Police said there were no injuries reported, but the footage outraged many on social media after it was posted there by Black community activist Vaun Mayes.
Mayes described the restrained victim as having special needs.
Many weighing in on the confrontation, including Mayes, wondered whether the man might have been more badly hurt – or worse – if the encounter had happened at a time when cellphones weren’t ubiquitous.
“These situations have historically ended badly for Black people,” Mayes wrote in part.
That remark seemed to be a pointed reference to the US’s history of lynchings. According to records maintained by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, at least about 4,800 Black people were lynched by racists across the US during the fewer than 100 years from 1882 to 1968.
False accusations often fueled those murders.
Mayes wrote on Twitter that he and others have since organized and staged a protest outside the white man’s home.