Jay Pharoah said he was aggressively stopped by police while jogging in Los Angeles, and detained by an officer who pinned him against the ground and put a knee on his neck.
It took place in April on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley, and the comedian just released security cam footage of the incident on his Instagram account as part of a video about police violence against Black people. Pharoah said it happened just a week before the video was released of Ahmaud Arbery, an African-American jogger who was shot and killed n Georgia by two white men who claim they suspected him of a local break-in.
“I was exercising,” Pharoah said in the video. “I see an officer to the left of me. I’m not thinking anything of it, because I’m a law abiding citizen.” He also said he had noise canceling headphones on, and didn’t notice the officer right away.
Then next thing he knew, he said officers surrounded him “with guns blazing,” holding their firearms out, but not firing. Pharoah said he thought he had walked into the middle of a stand-off with someone else. “I thought, ‘Whoever they’re about to get, it’s going to be terrible.’ But no, he was coming to get me.”
In the video, four officers swarm Pharoah, three of them with their guns drawn. The actor said he followed their orders and laid facedown as the handcuffed him. “The officer took his knee, and put it on my neck,” he said.
This incident happened weeks before George Floyd died while handcuffed in the same situation, with a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling for almost nine minutes on his neck. “It wasn’t as long as George Floyd, but I know how that feels,” Pharoah said.
The LAPD officers told him he matched the description of a suspect they were seeking: a Black man in gray sweatpants with a gray shirt.
The former Saturday Night Live star realized his celebrity might save his life. “I said if you Google right now Jay Pharoah, you’ll see that you made a big mistake,” he said.
Moments later, he said the police came back and apologized. “I said get these effin’ cuffs off of me,” he said. “I’m still here to tell my story, but I could have easily been an Ahmaud Arbery or a George Floyd.”
LAPD public information officer Tony Hyong Im told Vanity Fair that the department was reaching out to the division where the incident occurred to collect more information.
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