#Disturbing video of Schenectady cop kneeling on man’s neck sparks outrage

Disturbing video has emerged of a Schenectady cop punching a man and kneeling on his neck during a violent altercation that drew comparisons to the Minneapolis police arrest of George Floyd, who died after being unable to breathe, according to a report.

Yugeshwar Gaindarpersaud, 31, a member of the upstate city’s Guyanese community, told the Daily Gazette that he was stopped Monday by police investigating a report that his neighbor’s tires had been slashed.

He said he told the unidentified officer to provide evidence and began walking away.

“Put your hands behind your back!” the cop orders as he pulls out a pair of handcuffs, shows the footage shot by the man’s father, Jaindra, who was ordered to move back during the encounter.

“Put your hands behind your [expletive] back!” the officer yells as he lifts Yugeshwar’s leg and begins punching him in the torso as he appears not to move.

As the officer delivers the blows, his father and wife yell in protest.

“You got the foot on his head!” Jaindra shouts. “You’ve got the foot on his head!”

The father told the Gazette: “He stopped breathing and he was not moving and when he pinned him to the ground, he was not moving anymore, so I said, ‘He’s going to die just like George Floyd.’”

Yugeshwar said the officer’s “whole body weight was smashing my head into the concrete. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move.”

Two additional officers finally show up and place him in handcuffs. Only then does the first cop remove his knee from Gaindarpersaud’s neck area.

After being placed into a police car, he said he blacked out.

“When I woke up, I was in Ellis Hospital,” Gaindarpersaud, who was charged with disorderly conduct, told the newspaper, displaying abrasions on his face, leg and arm.

On Tuesday, Police Chief Eric Clifford defended the officer’s actions, sayins Gaindarpersaud was resisting arrest “both actively and passively” and was ignoring orders.

“The goal of law enforcement during a combative encounter should be to gain control of the subject, situation and achieve custody without causing injury,” Clifford said, according to the Gazette.

“At no time did the officer attempt to impair Mr. Gaindarpersaud’s breathing or blood circulation. The officer was alone and attempting to gain control of the continually struggling Mr. Gaindarpersaud,” he added.

In an executive order last month, Schenectady banned knee-to-neck holds along with chokeholds – but Clifford disputed that the officer’s knee was on the suspect’s neck.

“This officer briefly placed his knee on Mr. Gaindarpersaud’s head to maintain control of the subject while calling for help and giving repeated commands to Mr. Gaindarpersaud’s family to back up,” Clifford said.

“The officer holds the head of Mr. Gaindarpersaud to the ground only as long as necessary to get him handcuffed and immediately releases it once backup officers arrive,” he said.

Clifford also disputed that Gaindarpersaud lost consciousness.

“Upon arrival at police headquarters, Mr. Gaindarpersaud was conscious and immediately evaluated by Schenectady Fire Department paramedics then transported to Ellis Hospital for treatment,” he said.

The cop’s actions sparked a backlash from the city’s branch of the NAACP and activist group All of Us, which said the arrest was strikingly similar to the events that eventually led to Floyd’s death on May 25.

City Councilwoman Marion Porterfield, a member of the Schenectady NAACP, called the officer’s actions “excessive,” but stopped short of calling for his firing.

“Perhaps discipline is needed, and review of tactics and training when it comes to interacting with the public,” Porterfield told the Gazette.

Gaindarpersaud, meanwhile, told the Gazette that he plans to press charges against the officer but hadn’t yet consulted with a lawyer.