Purporting to show unnecessary police force, the images have streamed around the world and back.
A video appears to show a white New Rochelle police officer shouting, “Don’t f*****g move, guys!” at a group of young black men.
Or did someone send a cellphone clip to a local blog Talk of the Sound, knowing it would make police look bad?
Police say it was just a piece of “clever mischief.”
“There was no snowball fight,” New Rochelle Deputy Police Commissioner Anthony Murphy told the New York Daily News.
He said police were responding to a 911 call around 4 p.m. Friday that a teenager standing in a group of six near the Heritage Houses had pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at another person.
“We dispatched several cars to the area. Police officers got out of their cars and one of the individuals bent down, adjusted something in his waistband and ran,” Murphy said.
As one officer took off after the suspect, another remained with the five teens who did not run, Murphy said.
Two teens can be seen in the video kneeling with their hands in the air. The officer frisks both of them before ordering them to stand up.
“The group was compliant,” Murphy said. “(At the same time) the other cop is in foot pursuit of the suspect that had the gun. The suspect runs into an apartment house and into an unknown apartment.”
Police did not catch the suspect.
Not sure I’d trust anything Mayor Noam Bramson says.
He says we have to move the City Yard too. That’s just complete BS but he has to sell it otherwise nobody’s going to support the $35 million in borrowing that it’ll cost to undergo such a move. And remember $35 million in new bonds will cost the City of New Rochelle over $2 million every year and is that the best use of our limited amount of money? Instead, New Rochelle could take that $2 million and renovate the current City Yard and be completely done in 5 years. Seems like a no brainer to me.
Update: Noam Bramson The Mayor of New Rochelle was very gracious and responded immediately to my inquiry about this story. He told me:
“I was upset when I first saw it – but it turns out that the context here really matters. In fact, the Officer was not reacting to a snowball fight, but rather responding to a 9-1-1 call regarding a suspect with a gun, who fled the scene on foot. The City Manager released the following statement.
On Friday afternoon shortly after 3; 30, New Rochelle Police responded to an emergency 911 call reporting a man with a gun in the Hartley Houses area. Two police officers responded. During the response a suspect reached for his waist area and a pursuit ensued. The pursuit was unsuccessful and the investigation is ongoing.
And, during an interview, Mayor Bramson stated:
“The video is upsetting, but completely lacks context, and this is a case in which context changes everything. If the Police were responding to a snowball fight with a drawn firearm, it would be an outrage. In fact, the Police were responding to a 9-1-1 call and attempting to apprehend a fleeing individual suspected of concealing a gun.”
Last detail, Mayor Bramson posted on his website and Facebook page:
http://www.noambramson.org/2015/02/context-matters-new-rochelle-police-video/