It’s a dangerous time to be a Black man jogging in America. Former Saturday Night Live cast member Jay Pharoah revealed in a video shared to his Instagram that he was approached by four members of the Los Angeles Police Department, cuffed, with one of the officers kneeling on his neck, all because he “fit the description.”
His run-in with the police officers took place just one week before the footage of Ahmaud Arbery was released. Pharoah was out jogging with noise-canceling headphones on when four LAPD police approached him from behind with their guns drawn.
“I see an officer to the left of me. I’m not thinking anything of it because I’m a law-abiding citizen. And also keep in mind I got my Bose headphones on, noise-canceling, so I’m in my zone right now,” Pharoah explains. “I look to my left, the officer, I see him coming with guns blazing. I see him say ‘get on the ground. Put your hands up like an airplane.’”
The whole encounter was captured on video by a nearby security camera, and in the video, you can see officers approach Pharoah, guns out, and he gets on the ground with his arms out. A squad car pulls up, and more officers rush onto the scene. Pharoah complies the entire time. While he’s on the ground, you see the officers cuff him, and one of them kneels on his neck to restrain him.
When he asked, “why are you doing this,” the officers told him that he fit the description of a person of interest— a black male wearing gray sweatpants and a gray shirt.
“If you look— Google right now, Jay Pharoah, you will see that you made a big mistake,” he told the officers.
After making a phone call, the officers realize it was, in fact, a mistake and they let him go.
“I could easily have been an Ahmaud Arbery or a George Floyd,” Pharoah says into the camera.
He ends the emotional video with “I’m Jay Pharoah, and I’m a black man in America and my life matters. Black lives always matter. They always matter.”
