Video of Central Square incident raises questions, including role of a passerby taking part in arrest
A passerby leaped from his car to join police officers in a confrontation with a man in Central Square on Sunday, and city councillors say they are awaiting an official version of events.
In a 42-second video that councillor Quinton Zondervan posted at 1:17 p.m. Monday, two officers and a third man are seen by the Central Square YMCA following a fourth man along the wall and yelling at him to get on the ground. An officer is seen striking him once on the legs with a baton. The person shooting the video also urges the man to get on the ground to stop the situation from escalating. The man tumbles to the sidewalk, where he is urged to get on his stomach for handcuffing.
The passerby, who can be seen clearly in a white shirt compared with two uniformed officers, is seen threatening the man with his own baton. When the man is on the ground the passerby rushes forward to help officers secure him.
Councillors want to know who the man is, and what he was doing there.
“Who is the man in white, and why was he allowed to join the violence?” Zondervan said in his tweet, following up at the Monday council meeting with similar questions.
The man who was being followed by police is suspected of shoplifting candles from Walgreens, and was also pepper sprayed in the clash with police; he was taken to a hospital after the video ends, Zondervan said.
Not enough information
Though Zondervan refers to the clip as being “a very disturbing video [that] makes me sick to my stomach to watch,” councillors agreed there was not enough information in it to draw real conclusions. And councillor Marc McGovern said information from a preliminary conversation Monday with acting police commissioner Christine Elow conflicted with Zondervan’s initial take.
“The man in the white shirt is not affiliated with the Cambridge Police Department, he was not allowed to participate. They were actually trying to get him to stop. We don’t know where he came from. He was a passerby, not a police officer,” McGovern said.
At one point, though, the passerby is close to the suspect and looking like he’s about to strike at the upper body with his baton while the officers hang back.
Police spokesman Jeremy Warnick said Monday that there was context and background missing from what had been posted online about the incident, but he – and councillors – expected more information to be released Tuesday, including whether the suspect and police clashed before the video began.
Late order
A late policy order by Zondervan and councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler from Monday’s council meeting asked for an accounting no later than Nov. 8, saying it was unclear from the video “why the violent force was necessary, what probable cause there was for the arrest and how the situation was ultimately resolved.” The text of the order drew a connection between this incident and the kinds of violence that sparked Black Lives Matter protests over recent years.
The order drew council support, but with concern that it was inflammatory considering how little was known about the Sunday incident.
“We always want to find out if there are any [police] behaviors that would be called into question,” councillor E. Denise Simmons said. “I certainly will support this order, even though I do have some problems with the way it’s worded because it presumes information that my colleagues and I have not seen. I certainly know that my colleague would not misrepresent the truth deliberately, but it’s important that we see the evidence.”
An investigation is “warranted and required,” McGovern said.
Oh, the horror, a citizen helping the police! Say it isn’t so.
Yawn….what a nothing burger. The fellow in the white t-shirt will almost certainly turn out to be a plain clothes detective.
Maybe faux-rage buys a pony?
How about titling the story “Reaction of City Councillor to Routine Police Action Raises Questions”, and a story about how that councillor should be Much more supportive of the police?
Bono had to laugh at some of the comments. The “passerby” does appear to demonstrate a bit of “technique” (although he looks like he might need a bit of a weight-loss program [Medford Police Department??]), including when he helps put the handcuffs on, suggesting that he may, indeed, be an off-duty police officer. One officer actually appears to kick away what may have evidently been a knife (actually, possibly a switchblade; always the kind of “useful appliance” one likes to carry whenever one goes out “shopping” in Central Square!) Questions should not be limited to those raised in this strangely stilted article, but should include questioning how long we as a community are going to stand by and allow Central Square to be turned into a free-for-all drug bazaar and open-air theft operation and intimidation racket. Arresting some of these “characters” is no picnic, and getting stabbed is not something we should be asking anyone policing in our city to “volunteer” for unnecessarily. The guy obviously has severe problems; so do we let him go around stealing and stabbing?? That strikes Bono as real idiocy. (That’s the kind of mentality that just creates more Trump voters! Can we please be a bit more thoughtful about this?) The Walgreens in Central Square has been a “free store” for many months now, as have been other similar chain stores in Cambridge. People come in with backpacks and seem to think they can just “fill’er-up…” Nobody will ever dare say, “No.” In San Francisco, Walgreens stores are being closed because of the enormous theft, and related issues. Is that what we want?? Now people in SF are complaining about the “loss of stores” in their neighborhoods!! Oy Vey! https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Walgreens-to-close-5-more-S-F-stores-citing-16528444.php
Just wish the word “humanely” had popped up somewhere in any of the various cop “statements.” That should be part of how we do this, too. And, yes, perhaps the “passerby” deserves a modest commendation.
Here’s the supposedly “viral video” referenced in the SF Chronicle story linked above. We’re not there yet, but Bono does find himself wondering, how far down this road do we have to go? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHYH2XXBE9c&t=233s
Levy,
Why aren’t we concerned about two councilors leaping before they look rushing to the aid of a rapist? Quinton, Jivan, and The Day seem way more preoccupied with the citizen in white than the unregistered sex predator who put two officers in the hospital. Am I missing something?
Interesting – you really believe a single, nearly 60-year-old shoplifting suspect injured two trained police officers to such a degree without using his switchblade that they had to be off-duty for a week? Yet you seem unconcerned that these same, somehow grievously wounded officers let some random, possibly wholly untrained person help them instead of seeming to call for backup.
Here’s what I asked Bono in a separate email:
We have a police force of trained officers for a reason. Do they know how to do the job? Do they know how to do the job without the help of some random dude? Is it smart from a liability and litigation angle for the city and its police force to let some random dude potentially injure a suspect or be injured by that suspect? Do you know? Did these officers know? Did these officers call for backup and it didn’t arrive, leaving them no choice but to rely on the help of some random person off the street? Is this random person not going to wait to assist officers next time, and just take the law into his own hands because he feels encouraged? These are just some of the questions that occur to me.
The reason I’m “unconcerned” with the suspect is that this incident is essentially unremarkable except for the involvement of the passerby. Maybe my experience is limited, but I haven’t heard of this happening before – or needing to – and I was fairly shocked that police didn’t discourage the participation of an apparently random person. I would like to know more to understand why.
It happened in Central in 2018 where a civilian saved an officers life. What is remarkable that two councilors rushed to the aid of a child rapist before getting the facts. I’m really surprised you can defend that position.
I guess it would be up to the Police to file charges against the citizen. Or I suppose the child rapist could file private criminal charges against the citizen helper. I am not sure the message we want to send to citizens is that we shouldn’t help officers in need of help. That doesn’t mean I’m saying we ought to allow batman to roam the streets.
You may have information about the suspect’s previous charges that I don’t. (Even if the most recent of the two charges you refer to was from Dec. 31, 1999, that’s still nearly 22 years ago, and I have only so many hours in a day.) So far as I know, the “indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or older” means that the person involved is anywhere from 14 to 100-plus years old. The only thing known from the charge itself is that the victim wasn’t 13 or younger; neither of the convictions sound like they reached a legal standard of rape from the time.
My concern about having a random person involved in a physical struggle with a suspect is pretty much the same as having some random person step in to help by operating a forklift. Does this person have any idea what they’re doing? Are they going to make things worse for themselves or others? What are the standards for involvement? Considering the degree to which our police talk about their training, a two-officer scuffle with a 58-year-old shoplifter just doesn’t seem like it should rise to the level of needing help from a passerby.
This conversation glosses over the fact that Zondervan rushed to the presumption that CPD was doing something inappropriate. They weren’t and apprehended an unregistered sex offender. Citizens helps the police all the time and maybe something more happened here but making it the cornerstone of the story isnt, in my opinion, ethical or a message we should be sending to folks. I wish the two officers well and a speedy recovery.
Hear, hear Patrick!
Quinton needs to go! He has no idea what our great Police dept. Goes thru every day. There the best. Quinton needs to b defended! Get rid of him!!! He just wants to make problems. He has no common sense!
Quinton needs to go! He has no idea what our great Police dept. Goes thru every day. There the best. Quinton needs to b defunded! Get rid of him!!! He just wants to make problems. He has no common sense!
Quinton assumes things. Then he’s wrong! Defund him and City Council!