13 Sept 2017
A viral video shows a police officer taunting a black man and appearing to threaten him by saying, “you’d be the first one I’d shoot if I had a gun.”
According to the Washington Post, the cell phone-recorded video shows an unnamed West Midlands Police officer in the U.K. “joking” with a man whose apartment the police were searching.
In the beginning of the video, the police ask the man recording the video, whose face is not seen, why he did not immediately open the door for them.
“Because I was f**king half-asleep,” he responds. “I didn’t know who you was…You were climbing up the window like thieves.”
When they tell him they’re police, the man jokingly responds, “that’s even worse.”
“You’re going to go Black Lives Matter on us, are you?” one of the officers asks, to which the video’s recorder responds, “Yeah!”
That was when one of the officers tells the video recorder he’d be “the first one” he’d shoot.
Assistant Chief Constable Alex Murray, a spokesman for the West Midlands Police, said Wednesday after the video went viral that the unnamed officer’s comments were “not right,” and that he had apologized.
You can watch video of the exchange below.