‘The 6th time I was stopped in five days’: Insecure actor and BLM activist shares video of Colombian police punching him
‘This is a violation of human rights,’ says actor
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Your support makes all the difference.HBO 'Insecure' actor and Black Lives Matter activist Kendrick Sampson says he was punched in the face by a Columbian police officer who then arrested him.
Video shared on social media shows a confrontation between a man and a uniformed officer outside a shop in Cartagena on Tuesday.
About a second into the clip, the officer can be seen striking the man who stumbles back due to the force of the blow.
The officer then draws his gun from its holster and cocks it before attaching the weapon back to his waist.
The man is then handcuffed and led away by the cop.
While that incident unfolded, another officer spoke to a second man. Both men then headed off in the direction of the arresting officer.
It was not immediately clear who filmed the altercation, but it has been shared on the Instagram account of Mr Sampson and his friend Natalia Reyes, an actress.
Writing on Instagram on Wednesday, Mr Sampson confirmed that it was him in the clip.
“This is the 6th time I was stopped in five days,” he wrote.
The officer "punch me in my jaw and pull his gun on me [sic]," he said. "He then cuffed me and dragged me through the streets. I did not resist any legal procedure."
He added: "This is a violation of human rights that happens every day with no accountability. My heart hurts for people here, in the US and worldwide who get abused in the shadows (or in broad daylight with no accountability) and don't have that protection."
Mr Sampson, who led in BLM protests held in Los Angeles earlier this year and played Nathan in Insecure, said it was the 5th time in six days he had been stopped by police in Cartagena, a port city in north Columbia.
Black Columbians get stopped in the city "a lot", he added.
He said he was taken to a local police station and held for eight hours where officers asked for his version of what happened.
They asked him to point out the cop who is alleged to have assaulted him, according to Mr Sampson.
A photo shared by Ms Reyes on her Instagram Story showed Mr Sampson at the police station waiting to file a police complaint after his arrest.
"The police have the right to ask for your ID but they don’t have the right to punch you," she wrote in the post.
They can not "pull a gun on a person who is not committing any crime or offering any resistance, taking him to a station, not wanting to return his ID and even trying to admonish him?"
She added: “What if this person wasn’t filming? When is this gonna stop? It’s time to rethink the use of force".
The incident took place after Mr Sampson was asked for his identification, according to Ms Reyes.
The Independent has contacted the Colombian National Police for comment.
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