Just after 6:30 p.m. on a sunny Sunday in late June, Meridian Police Officer Bradley Chambers responded to a dirt-bike accident.
Parks Allen, 16, had lost control of his dirt bike on a residential street, struck a utility pole and injured his hand and foot. As he was taken by ambulance to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, three of his brothers rushed to the scene. They found the motorcycle down the street where it had been moved by neighbors and began to load it into the bed of their truck.
“That’s not gonna work,” Chambers told the brothers as he stepped out of his police car, according to police body-camera footage. “Take it out of the truck.” The brothers questioned the command. “It’s our property,” Gannon Allen, 18, said while videotaping the interaction.
The oldest brother, Samson, asked Chambers if he wanted to take photographs of the bike, which weighs over 200 pounds. “I’m not unloading it and then loading it again,” Samson said.
Roughly one minute into the interaction, Chambers came up behind Samson, ordered him to step away from the truck, and grabbed his right wrist. Chambers forced Samson to the ground and began to press his knee into the 21-year-old’s neck. He kept it there for nearly a minute.