A video that went viral on Wednesday shows an aggressive police arrest of a young black man who was allegedly smoking marijuana at a park in New York City.
Video of the incident, taken by a bystander, shows the man pleading with a plainclothes officer at the 100% Playground on Glenwood Road in Brooklyn on Wednesday night. The man repeatedly asked why he is being detained as the office held him against a wall, telling the man not to move, and pulling out what appeared to be a taser.
“I didn’t commit any crime. What crime did I commit? Tell me!” the man asked the officer, who appeared to ignore his questions. “You’re about to hurt me. What did I do?”
The woman who recorded the video can be heard reassuring the young man that she is filming the arrest. Moments later, police officers can be seen sprinting toward the scene and slamming the young man to the ground.
“You about to shoot me with a taser?” asked the man as witnesses asked the officers to stop. “Get off me! What is he doing? Help me! Help me!”
“I was walking home and, at first, I thought I saw two random guys, and it looked kind of aggressive,” said “Velvet,” who posted the video to Twitter. “I thought to myself, ‘The one guy had his hand up. Maybe he doesn’t want to fight, and I should help.’ So, I just turned around, and I saw the officer’s gun, and I thought, ‘That’s an undercover cop.’ Then, I heard the kid say, ‘Who are you? Can you identify yourself?’ and the cop ignored him, so that’s when I pulled out my phone.”
Detective Denise Moroney, a spokeswoman with the New York City Police Department, told Gothamist the incident began when officers saw “two males inside the park smoking a lit marijuana cigarette, and, as the officers approached, the individuals, they fled the location.”
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said the two men, age 18 and 20, were initially approached about a shooting in the area. During a news conference on Thursday, Shea admitted the video featured “disturbing points” but said the young man should not have run from the police. He also confirmed the man suffered abrasions and an ankle injury due to officers stamping on his foot.
“I would like to see approach, discussion, and no running,” Shea said. “No physical resistance at all. The problem is, you can’t go back in time.”
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams called for an investigation into the situation and for the officers involved to be placed on modified duty.
The arrest comes after Mayor Bill de Blasio told New York City police officers not to arrest people for smoking marijuana in 2018. Criminal defense attorney Rebecca Kavanagh decried the use of force for simple marijuana possession as unnecessary.
“As much as watching the video is shocking, it’s not extraordinary,” Kavanagh told the Washington Examiner. “This is what people I represent describe to me as how they are arrested. It’s not an unusual circumstance.”
In New York state, marijuana is decriminalized, although a person can still be stopped, ticketed, or arrested for possession or smoking the drug after the state passed new laws regarding the substance in August. Possession of less than two ounces of marijuana is treated as a violation, and possession of amounts above two ounces is categorized as a misdemeanor.
Kavanagh confirmed that police have the authority to arrest a suspect if they believe the person is a threat to public safety or if the person has a past criminal record. However, she admonished the officers in the video for the level of force they used to subdue the unarmed man.
“The police, although they have the right to arrest you, their use of force has to be proportionate,” Kavanagh added. “Police don’t have the right to do whatever they want. Although we see so much brutality in the way people are arrested, and I think people become almost conditioned to think that’s what a normal arrest looks like, now, that’s not legal. That isn’t what an arrest is supposed to be. That’s definitely excessive force.”
In New York, as in other urban sites that have decriminalized the substance, smoking marijuana in public is commonplace. In New York, however, black and brown people are overwhelmingly targeted for stops by the police. A New York Times report on minorities arrested for marijuana violations found that marijuana arrests in the Brooklyn area were four times as high as those in predominantly white areas such as Greenpoint.
