The New York Police Department continued on Friday to defend its arrests of two conflict mediators in Brooklyn in February, releasing body-camera and surveillance videos of the episode that police officials said showed one of the workers striking an officer.
The arrests of the mediators, one of whom was injured while being swarmed by officers, exposed tensions between the police and those known as violence interrupters, who work for city-funded organizations and try to defuse street-level conflicts before they escalate, including into gun violence.
The mediators, Mark Johnson and Dequann Stanley, who are longtime employees of the violence-interrupter group Save Our Streets in Crown Heights, were arrested in the episode and issued summonses for disorderly conduct. The charges were later dismissed.
The men filed court papers indicating that they intended to sue the city as a result of the arrests, which they said occurred as they tried to calm a man who was being taken into police custody.
But at a briefing this week and in a social media post on Friday, police officials said the men had disrupted officers as they arrested the man, who was ultimately charged with fentanyl possession.
The arrests and the ensuing fallout pose a challenge to Mayor Eric Adams, whose public safety strategy leans heavily on expanding the use of interrupters, a community-based supplement to traditional policing that has taken root in other major U.S. cities. Last year, Mr. Adams announced $86 million in funding for the interrupter system in the 2024 fiscal year.
The police and the interrupter groups both seek to combat gun violence while using starkly different approaches, and policing experts say the disparate roles can come into conflict in the chaos of an arrest.
Tarik Sheppard, the Police Department’s commissioner of public information, said the video released in several installments this week — a combination of body-camera footage and footage from police security cameras — showed how tensions often flare at crime scenes when interrupters get in the way of officers making arrests.
“Once the cops are saying, ‘I have probable cause to arrest somebody,’ that has nothing to do with a violence interrupter,” he said at a news briefing this week.
“None of them are supposed to be approaching arresting officers, and being like, “I need to know what happened here,’” Commissioner Sheppard said, adding that if an officer “is putting handcuffs on somebody, there is no interaction between violence interrupters and that situation. That is not their job, ever.”
“In a statement, M.K. Kaishian, a lawyer for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Stanley, said both men had “told the truth” about the circumstances surrounding the arrests.
“No S.O.S. workers interfered in the arrest in any way, nor were they alleged to,” she said, adding that she believed the police were objecting to officers’ behavior being questioned.
Courtney Bryan, the executive director of Center for Justice Innovation, which runs Save our Streets, said the organization stood behind Mr. Stanley and Mr. Johnson.
“We have met with and will continue to meet with city officials, N.Y.P.D., and community leaders to ensure our staff and all violence interrupters are treated as the indispensable, skilled partners they are,” she said in a statement.
The police initially declined to release video footage of the episode, or to comment on the arrests or on the department’s broader interactions with interrupters for a New York Times article published last Saturday.
The 15-minute long video sequence released by the police on Friday begins with the arrest of the man they accused of buying drugs.
The footage shows a chaotic scene, with officers first detaining the man, whose name was not released, and then surrounding him on the ground as he refuses their efforts to handcuff him. One officer fires a Taser at the man, the video shows.
Several violence interrupters can be seen following the officers, with Mr. Johnson telling them to “calm down” with the man. “You all don’t need to act stupid with him,” Mr. Johnson says. “He’s in handcuffs.”
Other videos released by Ms. Kaishian show Mr. Johnson also telling the man to calm down.
Mr. Johnson, Mr. Stanley and others with Save Our Streets follow the officers, who are in the street, as they lead the man to a patrol car, while appearing to stay several feet away.
Another clip released by the police shows Mr. Johnson walking on the sidewalk toward the police car and coming into contact with a lieutenant who extends his arms to the side, blocking Mr. Johnson’s path. Mr. Johnson briefly stumbles backward, and then appears to swat the lieutenant’s arm away.
At that point, the police footage shows, the lieutenant and several other officers swarm Mr. Johnson and bring him to the ground.
The police footage shows Mr. Stanley rushing forward, being swung around and brought to the ground by an officer and then surrounded by several more officers. In an interview, Mr. Stanley said he could feel himself being kicked and punched. The police did not release footage from the cameras worn by the officers who arrested Mr. Stanley.
Mr. Stanley was hospitalized with bruised ribs and a gash on his head after the arrest.
The video released on Friday concludes with the aftermath of Mr. Johnson’s arrest when, while handcuffed and being brought to a patrol car, he tells officers that he has a knife in his pocket.
One officer asks whether it will stick him, and Mr. Johnson replies no. When the officer thanks him, Mr. Johnson replies: “Of course, come on, I ain’t going to do that to you all.”
The police, who described the weapon as a gravity knife, did not charge Mr. Johnson with possession of a weapon. Gravity knives, which can be unfolded using the blade’s weight to swing open, are legal to carry in New York, but the police said they could have charged Mr. Johnson with a misdemeanor because the knife’s blade was longer than 4 inches.
Mr. Johnson, in the video, can be heard defending his actions and saying he was doing his job.
“You cannot stop me from walking the path of anything,” he tells the officers. “Come on, I work for S.O.S.”
Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
