A disturbing video of Laval police pulling a black man out of a car by his hair last week has surfaced, as protests denouncing police violence and systemic racism are leading to renewed calls for police reform in the U.S. and Canada.
A disturbing video of Laval police pulling a black man out of a car by his hair and striking him in the head has surfaced, as protests denouncing police violence and systemic racism are leading to renewed calls for police reform in the United States and Canada.
The video, separated into two one-minute chunks, has been viewed nearly 900,000 times since it was posted to Facebook last week, circulating amid footage of other brutal police interventions.
It shows a black man in his 20s in the passenger seat of a car, speaking with a Laval police officer standing on the sidewalk.
The officer asks the passenger to get out of the car, and the passenger asks why.
“For obstruction and a police investigation,” the officer says, in French.
“But what investigation?” the passenger asks.
“An investigation,” the officer replies, reaching into the vehicle and grabbing the man by his dreadlocks. He then knees the man in the head and throws him to the ground.
The second video shows the man contorted, face down on the ground, with two officers on top of him. They are yelling at him to put his hands behind his back, even while one of them grips the man’s wrist above his head.
At one point, one of the officers can be seen punching the man’s head and back.
“But you’re hitting me!” the man can be heard exclaiming. “You’re holding me.”
WATCH | Violent arrest of black man by Laval police caught on video:
‘These were gratuitous assaults,’ says lawyer helping Montréal-Nord man file a civil suit against the Laval police officers who pulled him from a car and beat him on May 25. 2:23
Samuel, whose last name CBC has agreed not to publish because he fears harassment, has relived those moments over and over since the arrest, which happened at the very same hour that George Floyd was killed in a brutal police takedown half a continent away, in Minneapolis, on May 25.
“All I wanted to know is, why did I have to come out of the car,” Samuel recounted to CBC on Wednesday.
“What’s going to happen if I get out of the car? What are they going to do to me? Am I going to put my hands behind my back, get handcuffed and get killed or something?”
He can’t stop thinking about the incident.
“At night, when I’m alone, it’s in my head. I can’t sleep. I need some help.”
‘With such disdain’
Will Prosper has seen dozens of videos like this since he traded in his RCMP badge for social activism 12 years ago.
Prosper is troubled by “the way he was treated by that police officer, with such disdain.”
Like Prosper, Samuel is from Montréal-Nord, and the civil rig