Jay Pharoah and the LAPD Show How Easily a Black Man in America End Ups with a Cop's Knee on His Neck
His workout clothes were reason enough to treat him like a violent criminal.
Comedian and actor Jay Pharoah didn't grow up with nearly as much fear of the police as many Black men in America.
The former SNL star describes himself as "a law-abiding citizen," who "grew up in the burbs" of Chesapeake, Virginia—where he was sheltered from a lot of the worst of American racism. Until this April, he had never been in a pair of handcuffs, let alone surrounded by police with their guns drawn, let alone pinned under a dogpile of LAPD officers, with one cop kneeling on his neck...
In a video detailing the experience—including some security footage of what went down, Pharoah, 32, explains that his parents "tried to shelter me and my sister for years," adding, "I didn't experience first-hand racism in America until this year."
According to Pharoah, the police told him that he "fit the description of a Black man in this area, with gray sweatpants on and a gray shirt," but he didn't even get that much of an explanation before he was made to sprawl on the ground with multiple guns drawn on him, waiting to be pinned and handcuffed.Prior to this violent encounter, Pharoah had been exercising with a pair of noise canceling headphones on, so from his perspective that first cop coming up at a fast pace, with his gun already drawn, seemed to come out of nowhere, and Pharoah was taken off guard. At first he assumed that he was just in the way—looked around for someone else that the cop might be addressing, but there was no one. That officer—and soon three more who would join him—was coming for Pharaoh.
The whole incident is emblematic of how little it takes for a Black man to end up on the wrong side of the police in America. Wearing gray sweatpants and a gray shirt—among the most non-descript outfits in existence—was enough of a basis to treat Jay Pharoah like a violent criminal.
Of course we don't know anything about the crime that led up to this moment. That other Black man in gray sweatpants and a gray shirt may have been a truly frightening person, but short of a Kill Bill-style martial arts assassin, the methods used by the LAPD to detain Jay Pharoah—who was already lying prone, sprawled out on the sidewalk, being as compliant as he could possibly be—seem excessive.
Of particular note, given the horrific killing of George Floyd around a month after the fact, is the moment when one of the police officers presses down on Pharoah's neck and back with his knee. While he was lucky in the sense that the officer only held him pinned like that for a few seconds, it's clear that the pain and helplessness of that situation left an impression on Pharoah, who says of George Floyd's experience, "I know how that feels."
Only after the handcuffs were on did the police officers explain that he matched the description of a suspect, at which point Pharoah used his fame to defuse the situation, reportedly saying to the police, "Google right now, 'Jay Pharoah'—you will see that you made a big mistake." Maybe they did Google him, and watched a clip of what he does, because a minute later the police were apologizing that they'd gotten the wrong guy, and Pharoah was telling them to "get these 'effing' cuffs off of me."
It's not clear if Pharoah's fame made a difference in getting him safely out of that terrifying situation, or if the police just got more information on the person they were looking for—maybe some other officers caught up with the actual suspect. In either case, it's clear that if Pharoah had panicked at any point in that incredibly stressful scenario, things might have gone much worse for him.
If he had run from the sudden sight of a drawn gun, would he have been shot? If he had struggled while being pinned, would that officer have pressed his knee against his neck harder? Kept it there longer?
Jay Pharoah is known for his spot-on impressions of everyone from Jay-Z to Denzel Washington to Kat Williams, but in this video—posted to his Instagram account on Friday—he doesn't do any characters or voices, and he doesn't try to lighten the mood. He focuses on relaying the facts of his story and delivering the message that "Black lives always matter."
The video closes with a stirring recreation of the moment he was pinned there—a knee pressing down on his neck while he delivers an impassioned message, saying, "We, as a country, can't breathe anymore. And we are tired—we are sick and we are tired of it. I can't breathe!"