He ran, and said he was nearly hit by one of the police cars.
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One of his friends, who originally shot the video, explained in a tweet that it was this “white couple,” who felt “uncomfortable,” who had called the police. A friend posted a video of officers handcuffing Goolsby as he screams and says he’s not resisting. They rallied behind the a hashtag, #JusticeforJason, an allusion to the perceived misconduct of the police officers.
The controversy surrounds this video, originally posted on Twitter, that shows police detaining Jason Goolsby, 18, after a brief foot chase. She claimed that he made her “uncomfortable” and that he may have been trying to rob ATM users.
Goolsby’s companion, who was filming the incident, can be heard repeatedly telling the police, “He didn’t do nothing”. The incident was caught on video which has since gone viral, sparking outrage and protests against the use of force by police by #BlackLivesMatter activists. “Officers in the area responded to the assignment”, said an email from Officer Sean Hickman, an MPD spokesman, sent to the media.
“This whole thing is making my head spin”, he said. However, it does state that the police “determined no crime was committed”. He also works as a model, and was deciding on whether he needed to take out money from the ATM after one of his studio sessions was cancelled.
Conboy later confirmed that “no criminal act was found to have taken place after the individuals were stopped and interviewed” and said the department was “reviewing the circumstances surrounding the stop to ensure that policies and procedures were followed”.
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The video began circulating on the internet Monday night, and by Tuesday afternoon, Black Lives Matter protesters began blocking off parts of Pennsylvania Avenue near Eastern Market. Last December he was awarded a ,000 college scholarship by Alpha Phi Alpha, the black fraternity whose alumni include Martin Luther King Jr and Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice on the USA supreme court. Goolsby was not at the protests, nor did he know that people were gathering in his name.
