Comedian Jay Pharoah said that he was stopped and handcuffed by Los Angeles police, with one officer kneeling on his neck in a restraint similar to the one that ended in George Floyd’s death.
In a video posted to Instagram, the former Saturday Night Live actor said that he was exercising in Los Angeles when four officers approached him with guns drawn, handcuffed him and held him to the ground.
Pharoah said that the incident took place about a week before Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed by two white men while jogging in Glynn County, Georgia.
Photo: Getty Images/AFP
He said that the officers told him he was held because he fit the description of “a black man in this area, with gray sweatpants on and a gray shirt.”
Security footage included in the video appears to show Pharoah walking down a sidewalk when a police officer runs up to him from behind with his gun pointed at him.
Another officer on foot joins that officer, also with his gun drawn, as a police cruiser rolls onto the scene. Two officers quickly exit the vehicle, one with his gun pointed.
The security footage appears to show the officers gathering around Pharoah to handcuff him as he lays spread out on the ground, and one officer putting his knee on Pharoah’s neck.
“They tell me to get on the ground, spread my arms out,” Pharoah said in the video. “They put me in cuffs. The officer takes his knee, puts it on my neck. It wasn’t as long as George Floyd, but I know how it feels.”
Pharoah, who during his stint on Saturday Night Live portrayed former US president Barack Obama, told the officers to look him up on Google.
“You will see that you made a big mistake,” he said he told them.
The officers released him “a minute later.”
“We are aware of the Instagram post and are looking into it,” Los Angeles police spokesman officer Drake Madison said.
The Guardian has not independently verified the footage.
Pharoah said that he was sharing the story because while he could have been an Ahmaud Arbery or a George Floyd, he was not.
“I’m still here to tell my story,” he said.
Pharoah went on CBS’ The Talk to discuss the incident in an episode scheduled to air on Monday. On the show, he described the kneeling as “totally gratuitous.”
“They didn’t have to do that,” he said.
“I was just trying to exercise,” he said. “It could have easily turned into another situation if I wasn’t who I am. And the point is that being black in America is just that, being black in America. Other people can’t level with the same fears I have. Leaving the house, we should not have to fear going to the grocery store, going to get some gas, running down the street. It’s called human civility. That’s what it is. It’s called being a human. That’s why everyone is out protesting. Corona put us in the house, and George Floyd took us out of it.”
In the Instagram video, Pharoah said that before this encounter, he had never been in handcuffs.
His parents had tried to protect him from the realities of racism, he said, but now he beseeched all black men to educate themselves on the law so that if police ever stop them, “we have the knowledge and we have the power to overthrow.”
“Be in the know,” he ended his video. “I’m Jay Pharoah, and I’m a black man in America. And my life matters. Black lives always matter.”
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