NYPD Officer Allegedly Steals $1000, Pepper Sprays Man In Another Awful Video
There’s another damning video of an NYPD officer using excessive force on a suspect out this morning, and this one involves a cop pepper-spraying a dude in the face and possibly stealing a wad of $1000 from him. The guy’s offense? Asking the officer to state his name during a police stop.
The video, obtained by the New York Times, shows another in a long line of what appears to be seriously excessive force. An unnamed officer forces Lamard Joye, out celebrating his 35th birthday, against the chain-link fence of a Coney Island basketball court.
“Look,” Mr. Joye says. “Look, you see this? Look.” The police officer reaches into Mr. Joye’s pocket, removes what appears to be a folded stack of bills and steps back.
“Give me my money,” Mr. Joye says in the video. The police officer then sprays something at him.
Mr. Joye said the officer took more than $1,000 in cash and deployed pepper spray.
In the video, others in the crowd begin protesting. “He just stole his money,” says a voice close to the phone’s microphone. “How you going to take his money?” someone else says.
Happy birthday, Lamard! A cop just robbed you. A spokesperson for the NYPD does little to clarify: ““The incident was precipitated by a call of a man with a gun. When officers arrived at the scene, they encountered numerous people at the location. As a result of the allegations, the matter is under investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau and CCRB.”
How many videos of police misconduct is it going to take before we acknowledge that the problem is not just a few bad apples, but an overall culture of overpolicing? What is going to tip the scale? This week we’ve already seen the police crack an unarmed teenager in the mouth with a gun and assault a man for smoking a cigarette. When there’s a new video surfacing every day of the week, it’s hard to believe that these kind of violations aren’t just normal operating procedure.