Activists expressed outrage and pressed their demand for 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 allegedly violated their own policy against neck restraints when an officer used his knee to bear down on the man’s head, the activists said.
The far-left American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania called it an illegal use of force.
Hundreds of people rallied in downtown Allentown on Monday night, calling for the officer to be fired and police funds to be reallocated to mental health and other social services.
“These police officers should not have been restraining him. He needed help,” said protester Maegan Llerena. Instead, she said, an officer “placed 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 the death of George Floyd, a black man, after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes.
Floyd’s death sparked global protests over police brutality and racial injustice.
The local Black Lives Matter 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.
“I can’t believe this is really happening now, and here,” said Justan Parker, founder of Black Lives Matter to Lehigh Valley.
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.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania tweeted that the police department’s “appalling excuse for an officer illegally placing his knee on a man’s neck is that he was in mental distress and being ‘non-compliant.’ Police should NOT be first responders to those in a mental health crisis.”
Attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents Floyd’s family, tweeted the video of the Allentown incident, writing that the restraint used by the unidentified officer is “exactly what led to #GeorgeFloyd’s death.” Crump demanded the officer’s name.
The official report from the coroner who examined Floyd suggests that he died of a heart attack likely due to an overdose. Floyd had three times the lethal amount of fentanyl in his system.
It’s unclear from the video how long the Allentown officer had his knee on the man’s head and neck area, or whether the other two officers in the video sought to intervene to push the officer’s knee off.
The man was treated at the hospital and released.
Police have not released the name or race of any individuals seen in the video. Community advocates said they were trying to identify the man in the video to offer support.
“During a health crisis, whatever it was, when he should’ve been given support, instead he was criminalized and he received a knee to his neck,” said Hasshan Batts, executive director of Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley, an Allentown community group.
Police have said their internal investigation is moving swiftly, and the department plans to release additional video later this week. The Lehigh County district attorney’s office assigned two detectives to the internal probe and planned to issue findings later this week.
“Our investigation is ongoing, and as we uncover additional information we’re trying to release that as we can,” Assistant Police Chief Bill Lake said.
Though Allentown police wear body cameras, Lake declined to say Monday whether police video of the incident exists.
A St. Luke’s spokesperson said the hospital has turned its own video over to police.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
