A video of a white Boston police officer stopping and engaging in a tense confrontation with a black man on the street has sparked outrage from civil right activists.
The man is seen walking down a street last Thursday when the cop inside a black car stopped and asked if his name was “Kevin.”
“You look like someone we’re looking to speak to,” the cop, who identified himself as Zachary Crossen, says in the video.
“Why do you need to know my name? Why are you stopping me, actually?” the Roxbury man activists identified as Keith Antonio asks.
Crossen, already out of the vehicle, then asks Antonio where he lived and suggested he looked like he was “killing time.”
Antonio, who filmed the encounter that was posted to Facebook and on YouTube, explained he was headed to the barbershop.
“Why are you bothering me?” Antonio continues. “You still didn’t tell me what you’re stopping me for.”
“Are your parents proud of you for flipping off the police?” Rossen asks in reply. At one point, Antonio calls the officer a “pig” and “stupid” before the officer walked back to his car.
Activist Jamarhl Crawford said the video shows how black men are regularly treated.
“This has been an ongoing situation where the interactions between the police department and members of our community, particularly those who are black and brown and male, are not friendly,” he told WCVB-TV.
“We need more data, we need more transparency, we need more accountability, and we need to confront this narrative that the Boston Police Department does it right when there are so many examples of them not,” Rahsaan Hall of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts said, according to the Boston Globe.
A Boston Police spokesman told the Globe the department is aware of the video and will review if it violated any rules.
