YONKERS, N.Y. (PIX11) — A confrontation between the Yonkers police officers and an allegedly unlicensed moped driver went viral, but police said the clip doesn’t show the full story.
The incident took place Monday outside of a Yonkers juice bar reportedly co-owned by the rapper Styles P, who talked about the video on his social media.
The nearly 2-minute-long viral video starts by showing two officers, who are white, on top of a Black woman, who’s on the sidewalk next to an overturned moped.
Styles P, born David Styles, is seen on video yelling at officers and telling them to back off of the woman.
“You slammed a girl for no reason,” Styles said. He also accused one of the officers of being “scared of Black people.”
The Yonkers Police Department shared its own 19-minute-long body camera footage on Facebook. A version of that body camera video, which shows the whole incident but has been edited for time and language, is in the video player above.
Police officials told PIX11 News the body camera footage shows “the events leading up to the incident in question,” and added, “the viral video does not.”
According to police, the incident started after the woman ran from officers after they tried to detain her during an alleged reckless driving incident. Police also accused the woman of driving an unregistered moped.
In the Yonkers Police Department body camera footage, the moped driver — who said she works for DoorDash — tells officers that she has the necessary registration for the vehicle. The officers, however, tell her that she needs to have the moped registered with New York State in order to use it on the road.
While looking for her registration, the moped driver is seen grabbing the vehicle and running from police. After a brief chase, one of the officers throws her down as the woman repeatedly screams that she is “not resisting arrest.”
Police said the officer who initially engaged the driver “utilized a standard take-down to bring her to the ground.”
“An internal investigation was immediately commenced at the scene, even before any videos of the incident were published to social media. The Yonkers Police Department routinely conducts full investigations into all uses of force by our officers,” an official told PIX11 News in a statement.
According to police, an early investigation determined “no force was used after handcuffs were applied.” More information will be released throughout the investigation.
The woman was charged with reckless driving, obstruction of governmental administration and resisting arrest. She also received summonses for unlicensed operation, reckless driving, failing to signal, not wearing a helmet and parking on the sidewalk. She received additional summonses for an unregistered, uninsured vehicle.
