New Audio Shows Florida Officer Threatened Black Man Before Choking Cop Who Intervened

Silent body cam­era footage released ear­li­er this year showed a Florida police offi­cer chok­ing his female col­league after she pulled him away from a Black man’s arrest. Recently released audio shows what the cop had said to the sus­pect and what like­ly caused the junior offi­cer to inter­vene. Sunrise police were respond­ing to a call about a man accused of attack­ing peo­ple out­side a con­ve­nience store in November. Officers hand­cuffed a 25-year-old man and tried to get him into a police vehi­cle. Sgt. Christopher Pullease then arrived on the scene, tak­ing an aggres­sive lead on the arrest and point­ing a Mace can­is­ter at him while curs­ing at the man.

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“Hey, hey, look at me. Look at me! You wan­na fuck­ing play fuck­ing games? You’re play­ing with the wrong moth­er­fuck­er,” Pullease tells the hand­cuffed man enter­ing the police cruis­er, accord­ing to the audio ini­tial­ly obtained by Miami TV sta­tion WSVN and pub­lished on March 23.

“Do what you got­ta do, man,” the sus­pect responds. “You gonna Mace me? Mace me.” According to Pullease’s body cam­era footage, the sergeant then leans into the vehi­cle to get clos­er to the hand­cuffed man.
“Look at me, moth­er­fuck­er. You wan­na play fuck­ing games? You wan­na be dis­re­spect­ful with my fuck­ing offi­cers?” Pullease shouts. “I will remove your fuck­ing soul from your fuck­ing body.” (a threat to kill)
It was at that point when the 28-year-old female offi­cer inter­venes by grab­bing the back of Pullease’s belt to pull him out of the car, as shown in body cam­era footage belong­ing to anoth­er offi­cer on the scene. The junior cop, who has about two years of expe­ri­ence on the force, appears to be try­ing to deesca­late Pullease’s con­fronta­tion with the suspect.

The sergeant then turns around and grabs her by the throat, back­ing her up against a patrol car. “What the fuck? Don’t ever fuck­ing touch me again,” the sergeant screams at her. “Get the fuck off me.”
Pullease then tells the junior offi­cer, “I’ll fuck­ing see you in about five min­utes.” The sergeant briefly goes to his police vehi­cle before com­ing back and demand­ing all offi­cers on the scene “turn off your fuck­ing cam­eras.” The footage ends at that point.
Sunrise police spokesper­son Justin Yarborough told HuffPost on Monday that the depart­ment released the video with sound after WSVN-TV pub­lished their copy of the video. *note that the sun­rise police depart­ment held the video with sound and only released it after the media released the sound ver­sion they had*.
Sunrise police sus­pend­ed Pullease, who has been with the depart­ment for over 21 years, in November with pay after launch­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into his behav­ior. The Broward County State Attorney’s Office launched a crim­i­nal probe into the sergeant in January. Yarborough said that the depart­ment is work­ing with State Attorney Harold Pryor’s office and has paused its inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion due to the crim­i­nal allegations.

“The need to with­hold audio has run its course,” the spokesper­son said. “Once the inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete, the find­ing will be avail­able.”*nope you with­held it until the media made it avail­able to the pub­lic and you want­ed to save face*
Yarborough said that the female offi­cer invoked Marsy’s Law, which allows crime vic­tims and police offi­cers to remain anony­mous in order to main­tain safe­ty against peo­ple who may retal­i­ate. As a vic­tim, the 28-year-old junior offi­cer request­ed that her iden­ti­ty be protected.
“I’m very proud of this police offi­cer. She took some defin­i­tive action,” Sunrise Police Chief Anthony Rosa told WSVN in an inter­view. “I can only imag­ine what she must be feel­ing. She’s a new­er offi­cer, and he’s a very senior sergeant.”
Rosa said that the depart­ment has already imple­ment­ed poli­cies requir­ing inter­ven­tion and de-escalation.
“This offi­cer inter­ven­ing and stop­ping a sit­u­a­tion from get­ting any worse is a direct reflec­tion of the train­ing that we do with the police depart­ment,” the chief told the Miami sta­tion. “And I think that it’s impor­tant to note that the behav­ior is very unac­cept­able by the sergeant, but the behav­ior of the offi­cer that inter­vened is exact­ly what society’s ask­ing their police offi­cers to do right now.”