Allentown, PA

Police Officer put his knee on a man's head.

A citizen video of an Allentown police officer pressing his knee into a man’s neck during an arrest sparked a march Saturday where the police chief announced an investigation.

The video surfaced on social media Saturday night showing the arrest of a man on the sidewalk outside of the emergency room at St. Luke’s Sacred Heart Campus, 421 W. Chew St. The short video was shot by an unidentified person driving by just before 7 p.m. and shared by Black Lives Matter to Lehigh Valley.

The Allentown video mobilized a small crowd of protesters, who broadcast their march up Hamilton Street on Facebook Live around 11 p.m. As they walked down Allentown’s main downtown corridor, they chanted “defund the police,” “Black Lives Matter” and “no justice, no peace.”

The march also featured as call-and-response chants saying Floyd’s name and Breonna Taylor’s, a Black woman who was killed in Louisville when police officers shot her in her home earlier in the year.

They arrived at the Allentown Police Department precinct where they knocked on the doors and chanted things like, “hands up, don’t shoot.”

Mayor Ray O’Connell arrived first and told those gathered the video was “disturbing,” but said they needed all the information.

Shortly after, Allentown police Chief Glenn Granitz Jr. arrived and spoke with the crowd, who pressed him to say whether or not the officer’s actions violated the department’s use of force policy.

(The Allentown Police Department posted its use of force policy online July 2, joining the Bethlehem police, which was the first Lehigh Valley department to release its force policy.)

According to the 29-page policy, “police officers shall use only that force that is reasonably necessary to effectively bring an incident under control, while protecting the lives of the officer and others.”

Granitz repeatedly told the crowd he’d just gotten home from vacation and came to the station to investigate. Many factors go into whether an officer violated the use of force policy, the chief said.

“I’m here to look at what is going on,” Granitz said.

https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/news/2020/07/allentown-police-investigating-video-of-officer-with-knee-on-mans-neck.html

https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2020/07/12/video-of-allentown-police-officer-putting-his-knee-on-mans-neck-during-arrest-prompts-protests/

https://twitter.com/BLMlehighvalley/status/1282136500092755974