Minneapolis cop: ‘If you f— with me, I’m going to break your leg’
MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) – When officers ordered him out of the car, a young man hit record on his smartphone, and he captured not-so-polite words from police.
“Plain and simple, if you f— with me, I’m going to break your leg before you get the chance to run. I’m being honest I don’t screw around,” the officer said.
Mohamed’s friend said in return, “I never said I was going to run.”
“I’m just giving you a heads up. Just trying to be officer friendly right now,” the officer said.
Faysal Mohamed, 17, sent Fox 9 the video recorded by his friend, which he also posted on his Twitter account. He said after playing basketball at the YMCA on Blaisdell Avenue in south Minneapolis with friends on March 18, police pulled over their car. The four were ordered out, put in hand cuffs, and they waited nearly 45 minutes as police searched their vehicle and did background checks.
“Can you tell me why I’m being arrested?” a friend asks in the video.
“Because I feel like arresting you,” the officer replied.
Officers eventually told them they were suspected of stealing the car and they were let go without being arrested. Mohamed and his friends are of Somali descent and said they feel they were racially profiled, but also said the officer was simply disrespectful without a reason. A Minneapolis police spokesperson said the incident is under investigation and they are unable to comment.
Mylan Masson, a former Minneapolis Police Officer, now teaches at the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Education Center in Brooklyn Park.
“We teach the students to be polite, and we always say sir and ma’am,” she said.
Masson said the other officers in the video did just that, but the lone officer heard using profanities and making a threat is not the way police are trained to handle traffic stops.
“I certainly would want to know the whole call and see what happened, what provoked him or her to do something and then to retrain them and then say this is not appropriate,” Masson said.
The Minneapolis Police Department keeps record of all traffic stops, but asked Fox 9 to file a data practices request before they can release more information. Masson says depending on the officer’s history, he could be given some type of reprimand.
CAIR-MN calls for DOJ investigation
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations on Friday called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the video.
“This type of troubling incident only serves to harm the trust that is necessary between law enforcement officers and the community they serve and protect,” said CAIR-MN executive director Jaylani Hussein. “The Department of Justice should open an independent investigation of this case.”