big daddy's blog

The video shows a police officer striding toward a young man standing on a platform at the 45th Street subway station in Brooklyn. A few seconds later, the officer pats him down. Shortly afterward, the young man appears to fidget against a wall and the officer slams him to the ground, ripping a subway ad from the wall in the process. The officer does it again, then puts the young man in a headlock and handcuffs him.

That scene was captured by David Galarza, a local activist, who said he recorded it last Thursday night. At a news conference on Thursday in Brooklyn, Mr. Galarza and other local activists said the officer’s confrontation with the young man, Sean Pagan, 19, was another example of the police’s mistreatment of the predominantly Hispanic and Asian residents of Sunset Park.

This time, however, they say they have a video to support their contention.

“These are young people of color who are victimized many times, and this kind of excessive force, sometimes it’s captured, sometimes not,” Mr. Galarza said before screening the video for reporters at a Latino community center in Sunset Park. “There was an arrest of a young man, but not of the officer who did the groping, and who did the choking.”