Rochester, NY - Family members of two men arrested by Rochester police on Monday say multiple recordings of those arrests show police being ...
Rochester, NY - Family members of two men arrested by Rochester police on Monday say multiple recordings of those arrests show police being hostile and abusive. Police, on the other hand, said the recordings illustrate the "tremendous restraint" used by officers in a volatile situation.Clinton Section Capt. Korey Brown said the incident began when officers went to Grafton Street off Portland Avenue looking for a man police had been told threatened his girlfriend with a gun.There they found a man who matched the suspect's description and attempted to interview him, but he refused to identify himself or talk with officers. That man, who later identified himself to a reporter as Daryl Appleberry, is the brother of the man police were looking for, Brown said.Officers handcuffed Appleberry without a struggle while his sister recorded the event on her mobile phone. Meanwhile, as officers were talking with Appleberry, his neighbor, Scean Gordon, also recorded the incident on his own phone. In Gordon's video, officers ask Gordon to back up, and get out of the road when a car is coming down the road. Gordon swears loudly at officers, uses racial names, and tells them he has no obligation to listen to them and tells Appleberry he has no obligation to cooperate with officers.A second video taken by Appleberry's sister, shows officers pulling away with Appleberry in their car. Gordon, police said, at that time is standing in front of the police cruiser. The video shows the cruiser travel just a few feet, then the driver's side door opens and an officer exits. As he walks to the front of the car, Gordon appears in the screen.The officer says "you're under arrest" and reaches for Gordon, who evades him and begins to run. The officer and Gordon struggle and other officers join the arrest, pinning Gordon down and using pepper spray to subdue him. Appleberry said officers also used a Taser on Gordon but the videos do not show that, and police said it did not happen.Brown said his officers showed restraint throughout the arrest while several people were screaming at them while they did their investigation. Less