ComPol Says Police Officer Wasn’t Choking Civilian in Seine Bight

A video showing a police officer purportedly manhandling a civilian in Seine Bight Village is causing outrage on social media. The incident happened over the weekend in front of a group of persons who, themselves, were hostile towards the police officers. Commissioner of Police Chester Williams viewed the footage earlier today and shared his thoughts with the media.

Chester Williams

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“It’s appalling for the most part to see sometimes how the media would run with negativity when it involves police officers. I watched the video as you showed me a few moments ago, for the first time and from what I saw, the police was not really choking the person. The police was holding the person in a certain position. If you can look at the person, the person was still, for the most part, resisting and was still moving his entire body which means that the manner in which he was being held by the police did not fully restrain him, so it is not per se a tight chokehold as one may want to say. And I look at the behavior of the persons around, how they were behaving towards the police and trying to remove the person that the police seemingly was trying to detain. And again, these are the things that the public needs to be aware of, the police officers are out there to perform their duties and when you come so close to the police as I saw in that video, it is tantamount to obstruction.”