In a video posted on Instagram last Friday, the former actor “Saturday Night Live” said he was exercising when four officers came to him with “firearms,” and told him to go down to the ground.
“They handcuffed me, the officer took his knee, put it on my neck. It was not until George Floyd, but I know how it feels,” Pharoah said, when the watchdog video, dated April 26, showed meeting with police.
The 32-year-old player noted that the incident occurred about a week before the recording of Ahmaud Arbery being chased by two people and killed in Georgia was released.
Pharoah said that officers told him he was detained because he fit the description of a “black man in the area wearing a gray trousers and gray shirt.”
He told the clerk that if they searched his name on Google, “you will see that you made a big mistake.” Pharaoh said he was released “a minute later” and officers apologized.
Pharaoh said this was the first time he was handcuffed. Growing up in the suburbs and with parents trying to protect him, the 32-year-old comedian said he had not experienced direct racism in America until this year.
But now he urges other black men to educate themselves about the law so that if the police stop them, “we have knowledge and we have the power to overthrow.”
Pharoah added that he could “easily become Ahmaud Arbery or George Floyd,” but he was “still here to tell my story.”
At the end of the video, Pharaoh relives the moment when the officer knelt.
“We as a country cannot breathe anymore. We are tired, we are sick and tired. I cannot breathe,” he said.
LAPD said they were aware of the video and were being investigated.
Since the death of George Floyd and the subsequent global protests, at least 20 cities and cities in the US have moved to ban or prohibit the use of choke hold. Cities include Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego, Miami, Chicago and New York City.
Stella Chan and Ray Sanchez from CNN contributed to this report.
