Update: Black man arrested in St. Paul for refusing to relinquish rights

Earlier today we reported that a Black male heard on a video of St. Paul cops was harassed and later arrested by St. Paul police but had little information of the details. Those details are starting to emerge.

From the Twin Cities Daily Planet:

The video, shot by the man’s cellphone, shows his interaction with officers as he attempts to pick up his children from New Horizon Academy in downtown St. Paul. As the officers force the man to put his hands behind his back, he drops his phone and the video goes black, but the audio continues and we hear the man crying for help and proclaiming that his kids are watching. Both officers in the video are white. “Why do I have to let you know who I am?” the man tells the first female officer at the beginning of the video. “I don’t have to let you know who I am if I haven’t broken any laws.”

From the following dialogue, it appears the police were called by a store clerk, who was upset over the man sitting in front of his store. The man in the video tells the officer he was sitting in front of the store for 10 minutes as he waited for his kids to get out of school, and that the area is public and he had a right to sit there.

“The problem was —” the female officer begins.

“The problem is I’m black,” the man fires back. “It really is, because I’m not sitting there with a group of people. I’m sitting there by myself. By myself, not causing a problem.”

Eventually a second male officer approaches the man in the video and attempts to restrain him.

“I’ve got to go get my kids,” the man tells the second officer, pulling his arm away. “Please don’t touch me.”

“You’re going to go to jail then,” the second officer says.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” the man replies.

The incident occurred in January, but police kept the confiscated phone for six months and why the video is only now surfacing.

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All charges against Chris Lollie, the man in the video, were eventually dropped as he states in the video, he knows his rights and is not breaking any law. Looks like Gestapo police are going to cost tax payers even more money for violating a person’s human and civil rights.