The former Saturday Night Live star recalled an incident with the Los Angeles Police Department, during which he said an officer placed a knee on his neck in a case of mistaken identity in April 2020.
In an interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning, Pharoah said he was walking across the street when a group of officers, guns drawn, approached him and instructed him to get on the ground and spread his arms out. After he complied, "The officer comes, he gets on top of me, he puts his knee on me ... he puts on the cuffs," Pharoah recalled. "I'm shocked, I'm scared, I don't know why I'm being detained. I'm just totally confused right now."
Eventually, Pharoah said the officers pulled him up and told him he fit the description of a black man in gray sweatpants and a gray shirt, which the comedian was also wearing. Pharoah said he informed the cops that he didn't have his ID on him but that they could Google his name to identify who he was.
"A couple of minutes later, they came back and they said, 'Oh, we got a call that you're not the guy. Sorry,' " he said, adding, "That's not enough."
"I just thought, why?" Pharoah told King. "Now, I do not have eight minutes and 46 seconds of an officer being on top of me like that, obstructing my airway and choking me. I don't have that. Luckily, they pulled me up and I got out of it. But it's like, why does it have to go to that extremity, when I'm an innocent bystander?"
Pharoah revealed that in the moment, he feared for his life, and that his parents were distraught when he told them the story.
"Black people in America ... why do we have to feel like we're guilty until proven innocent, where the other side gets innocent until proven guilty?" he asked. "That's the big message. The message is you can be innocent as a Black person, not doing anything, totally unassuming. You're totally innocent, and you can still get messed with."
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June 24, 2020 at 10:38PM
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