On 3rd of August, 2019, the Galveston Police Department had apologized for the way their officers had arrested a black man. The department stated that the two officers had arrested the 43 years old man for criminal trespassing in Galveston, Texas.
The black man was handcuffed. The handcuff was clipped by a rope before he was walked down the street by the officers. The black man was being taken to the Mounted Patrol Unit staging area.
Photographs of the arrest were taken and published on social media. In the photographs it was shown that the man’s hands were behind his back and he was walking between the horses and the officers. The blue rope was clearly visible in the photographs where one of the officers was holding the rope.
This is just sickening and uncalled for.
This young black man was put on a leash while handcuffed between two mounted horses in Galveston, Texas.
This invokes painful imagery of slave catchers and runaway enslaved Africans. pic.twitter.com/ZHEmyCYbUE
— zellie (@zellieimani) August 6, 2019
The Galveston police department said that “While this technique of using mounted horses to transport a person during an arrest is considered a best practice in certain scenarios, such as during crowd control, the practice was not used correctly in this instance.”
According to the officers, they knew the man. They have warned the man several times before not to trespass the location.
Police officers arrested Donald Neely, who is Black, for trespassing, handcuffed him, attached a rope to the handcuffs and led him through the streets of Galverston on mounted horses. All as though they were slave masters, and he were their slave. https://t.co/G0ryVdi8Mj
— Rebecca J. Kavanagh (@DrRJKavanagh) August 6, 2019
The Galveston Police Chief Vernon L. Hale, III said on Monday that, “First and foremost, I must apologize to (the man arrested) for this unnecessary embarrassment.” He continued by saying, “Although this is a trained technique and best practice in some scenarios, I believe our officers showed poor judgment in this instance and could have waited for a transport unit at the location of the arrest.”
Police Chief Vernon L. Hale, III said that “My officers did not have any malicious intent at the time of the arrest, but we have immediately changed the policy to prevent the use of this technique and will review all mounted training and procedures for more appropriate methods.”
Till now, there are no updates on whether any disciplinary action was being taken against the officers.