Video Of Arrest In Brooklyn Prompts Protests, Calls For Investigation Into NYPD
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A video posted online of an arrest in Brooklyn is prompting protests of the NYPD.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police commissioner are now reacting to that video, which has been viewed millions of times.
It happened Wednesday night, and Thursday, people gathered in Canarsie to protest what they're alleging is police brutality. Those protesters want the Brooklyn District Attorney to investigate, CBS2's Alice Gainer reports.
The cell phone video begins after a man has already been stopped by an undercover police officer.
"I didn't commit any crimes, so can you get off of me?" the man says.
"Stop moving," the officer says.
The person who posted the video on Twitter said that she pulled out her phone once she saw the incident happening on her walk home.
"Yo, bro, stay still," she yells at him.
The man who was stopped starts walking away as he asks several more times what crime he committed.
Police back-up comes.
"Stop moving," the officer says.
The camera moves away and then back, where we see multiple officers approach and the man is taken down.
Police say a Shot Spotter alert came in Wednesday indicated shots fired.
Several blocks away from that, around 7 p.m., NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea says, "Two officers, I think, encountered two males in a park. As they approach them, they believe they're smoking marijuana. As they go to interact with them, again, they just had the shots fired in the area, the two males immediately take off running in different directions."
Shea says there will be an internal review of what happened.
"There's a scrum, if you will, of officers. You see somebody standing on what I believe to be ... his ankle," Shea said.
He says he saw photos of the man arrested in the video, and he had an abrasion on one knee but otherwise no injuries.
Fritzroy Gayle is the man arrested in the video.
His mother and others rallied outside the police precinct Thursday.
"You're gonna have one person, a young man, on the ground like that, they treat him like he's an animal and it was not necessary," Gayle's mother said.
The other young man who was caught was issued a summons and released.
Gayle was charged with possession of marijuana, resisting arrest and unlawful obstruction of government administration. He was released on a desk appearance ticket.
De Blasio tweeted the video was "painful to watch" and that "a full investigation is underway."