A video appears to show police in a New York city pointing a gun at snowball-throwing black teens, reports said. However, police said it’s not what it seems.
Police in the viral video, according to the New York Post, were responding to a 911 call in New Rochelle in Westchester County. The officer in the video, Sgt. Joseph Salerno, is heard saying: “Don’t f----g move, guys.”
But the whole thing is misleading, New Rochelle Police said. “There was no snowball fight,” New Rochelle Deputy Police Commissioner Anthony Murphy told the New York Daily News, and added that was “clever mischief.”
“We dispatched several cars to the area. Police officers got out of their cars and one of the individuals bent down, adjusted something in his waistband and ran,” Murphy told the paper.
He said the two teens, who had their hands in the air, were keeping their hands in the air.
“The group was compliant,” Murphy added. “(At the same time) the other cop is in foot pursuit of the suspect that had the gun. The suspect runs into an apartment house and into an unknown apartment.”
Murphy said he doesn’t agree with the assertion that the teens were in a snowball fight. “There was no snowball fight,” he said.
“The video looks terrible, but it’s completely out of context,” another source New York Daily News. “It’s a completely different incident than it appears from that snippet. There’s clearly a lot of misunderstanding. The record of the 911 call will by itself illustrate what was going on.”
The video was originally uploaded to LiveLeak.
