Local authorities are investigating and protests have erupted after a video captured over the weekend showed a Pennsylvania police officer leaning on a black man’s neck during an arrest.
The viral video was shared Saturday by Black Lives Matter in Lehigh Valley. The video shows three officers apprehending a black man who is face down on the pavement outside Saint Luke’s-Sacred Heart Campus Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania. An officer appears to lean on the man’s neck with his elbow and then his knee.
BREAKING: @AllentownPolice was filmed on Saturday night applying the same force to a resident that cops used to murder #GeorgeFloyd.
This happened here in #Allentown outside a hospital.
We demand answers. We demand change.
We have finished dying. # DefundThePolice pic.twitter.com/AbuyvkMNdT– Black Lives Matter to Lehigh Valley (@BLMlehighvalley) July 12, 2020
According to ABC News, the Allentown Police Department released a statement that did not name the officers involved, but said the man was restrained after he “continued to fail” with hospital officials and staff and after he began to “yell, yell, and spit at officers and hospital staff.”
Authorities reportedly said the detained man was treated at the hospital and released.
ABC News reports that the department is conducting an internal investigation into the force seen in the video, and the Lehigh County District Attorney will review the investigation, which is expected to be completed sometime this week.
The video has sparked widespread backlash, including protests in the area, as many say the images recall the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck during almost nine minutes. Floyd’s death has sparked calls across the country to address racism and police brutality, as well as calls for police reform to end the bottlenecks.
Ben Crump, the attorney representing Floyd’s family, also shared the viral video over the weekend, calling it “exactly what led” to Floyd’s death.
.
