A morning commute in Hyattsville turned into a full blown spectacle when an ICE agent dropped his pistol during a chaotic street arrest, then briefly pointed his gun toward a the crowd of onlookers, as seen on the video here. The clip, filmed on Wednesday around rush hour by local photographer Raphi Talisman, captures a tense struggle in the middle of a busy intersection as drivers lean on their horns and pedestrians shout at agents to put the weapon away.
The video opens with two ICE officers wrestling a man to the pavement near Hamilton Street and Queens Chapel Road. One agent’s handgun slips to the ground, he scrambles, snatches it back up, and in the same motion appears to point it toward the crowd for a brief moment before keeping it in a low ready position. Bystanders can be heard yelling, “Put the gun down,” while others demand to know why the man is being detained. The photographer later said he had just dropped his child at school when traffic suddenly stopped, so he stepped out and started recording.
The detainee, switching between English and Spanish, pleads with officers, yelling “Help!” and shouting that he loves America. At one point, he says he was born in D.C., while an agent shouts back that the man is a criminal. The scene grows louder as more cars stack up and a chorus of beeping cars mixed with the officers’ commands. Additional ICE personnel eventually arrive, help secure the man, and load him into a minivan, while the armed agent shouted at the crowd and asked whether anyone wanted to “take him home.”…