This video shows a remarkable scene of police overkill in a Harlem subway station on the afternoon of May 13. What begins as two cops from the NYPD trying to handcuff a seemingly unthreatening black man quickly spirals into over two dozen officers flooding the station to arrest him.
The video opens with one of the two arresting officers repeatedly shouting, “Put your hands behind your back and stop resisting!” at the suspect, who they have pinned to the ground. The second officer, who looks extremely uncomfortable, gently asks his partner to “relax” several times.
The two officers then force the suspect—or, more accurately, the victim—to his feat and try to handcuff him up against the wall. But the suspect keeps planting his foot and hand on the wall and explains to the officers that he’s afraid they will slam his face into it. They assure him they won’t and they cuff him, at which point all hell breaks loose.
Around the 1:02 mark, two more cops come rushing in and literally grab the victim’s feet from under him, slamming his body to the ground as he screams “I haven’t done anything, I haven’t done anything!”
At the 1:30 mark, the handcuffed man is being held face down on the ground by all four police officers when cop comes storms in asking his fellow officers “You guys alright?” as though they were the ones who had just been brutally attacked. Still, more cops trickle and then flood into the station until the victim is completely submerged under what looks like an angry lynch mob.
The person recording the incident on his cell phone is then forced out of the station, which has been surrounded by a dozen police cars outside.
The video ends with witnesses telling the cameraman that the victim was just “standing there” when he was arrested for “no reason”.
Can you imagine how difficult it would be to live in an environment where this shit goes down on the regular? Make no mistake, the scene in the above video is routine in certain NYC communities where people of color are disproportionately stopped, questioned, frisked and harassed as a matter of policy. And the slightest sign of resistance, like instinctively protecting your face from being slammed into a wall, could land you behind bars for “resisting” or even “assaulting” a police officer, a label that brings on a world of trouble.
LYNCHING HARLEM STYLE !!!
Lord have mercy,,,, So much panic & sheer force for unarmed civilian???
Get a lawyer & shake the roots of the lynching gangs.
June 3, 2013 at 5:10 pmThey thought there was a doughnut sale??? Insane. Please sue them.
June 3, 2013 at 5:25 pmReblogged this on berealblack.
June 4, 2013 at 7:44 amMeanwhile, what sorts of actual crimes were going down while every cop in the precinct was down there bothering that one guy? This illustrates – that once again – the NYPD is not about law enforcement at all. Out there acting like a gang of thugs.
June 6, 2013 at 10:28 amReblogged this on smashedlantern and commented:
From Rania Khalek’s “Dispatches from the Underclass”, an example of institutionalized racial prejudice.
June 9, 2013 at 7:57 amwow… NYPD obviosuly have nothing else to do.
June 9, 2013 at 1:44 pmI live in Queens and I bike into Manhattan every day. There’s a cop on every corner supposedly directing traffic. I think they’re waiting for something…
June 9, 2013 at 1:59 pmLucky you. I can tell you, 1st hand, the consequences of too little law enforcement personnel on hand. I’d never dare venture on foot into downtown Seattle if there weren’t ample foot patrols on the beat. They make a difference. Racial profiling isn’t an argument for eliminating public safety.
June 16, 2013 at 6:49 am@ pinbalwyz
Nobody talked about eliminating anything. So-called public safety isn’t an argument for racial profiling. NYPD is not doing their job descriptions. Imagine if 26 grocery store employees showed up to bag up your purchases. Overkill.
June 30, 2013 at 5:59 am