Photo: Facebook / Christin Neely
Here’s a sight you don’t expect to see in the year of 2019: two white police officers leading a black man with his hands handcuffed behind his back, by a rope, through the streets of a Texas city.
It happened in Galveston, and the man in question is Donald Neely, a 43-year-old father of 8 known to suffer from mental illness, who is also homeless. He was charged with trespassing and was arrested, but the responding officers didn’t wait for a transportation vehicle. So they led him to the station by putting a leash on him.
According to NBC News, who spoke with the family’s attorney, Neely has had his fair brushes with the law, but he is not violent. Because he is such a familiar figure with the police, they should have known his history of mental illness. The attorney believes that their behavior in this circumstance shows malicious intent.
The arrest was captured on video and in photos, and the materials have been widely circulated online, drawing intense criticism of a policing practice that brings to mind the dark times of slavery. Despite that, the Galveston Police Chief says that the way the arrest was conducted wasn’t racially motivated.
He says this is a “trained technique and best practice in some scenarios,” but agrees that the officers “showed poor judgment. A transportation unit was not immediately available at the time of the arrest and while the technique may have been appropriate during crowd control, the practice was not used correctly in this instance,” the Chief adds.
He includes a formal apology to Neely and his family, all of whom are up in arms and planning to sue the PD for what they call a humiliating, heart-breaking experience.
The officers pictured have been identified as Officer Patrick Brosch and Officer A. Smith, and they are not currently under any disciplinary action.
According to NBC News, who spoke with the family’s attorney, Neely has had his fair brushes with the law, but he is not violent. Because he is such a familiar figure with the police, they should have known his history of mental illness. The attorney believes that their behavior in this circumstance shows malicious intent.
The arrest was captured on video and in photos, and the materials have been widely circulated online, drawing intense criticism of a policing practice that brings to mind the dark times of slavery. Despite that, the Galveston Police Chief says that the way the arrest was conducted wasn’t racially motivated.
He says this is a “trained technique and best practice in some scenarios,” but agrees that the officers “showed poor judgment. A transportation unit was not immediately available at the time of the arrest and while the technique may have been appropriate during crowd control, the practice was not used correctly in this instance,” the Chief adds.
He includes a formal apology to Neely and his family, all of whom are up in arms and planning to sue the PD for what they call a humiliating, heart-breaking experience.
The officers pictured have been identified as Officer Patrick Brosch and Officer A. Smith, and they are not currently under any disciplinary action.
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