On Friday, officers in Cambridge tackled and punched 21-year-old Selorm Ohene before arresting him. They had received multiple calls that he was behaving in an "aggressive, unreceptive and intimidating" manner, and Ohene was ultimately charged with indecent exposure, resisting arrest and assaulting an EMT worker. However, Cambridge police are now reevaluating those charges.
Cambridge Police Commissioner Branville Bard told reporters on Monday that if Ohene's actions are found to be linked to mental health issues, it is possible the charges against him will be dropped completely.
"This department is going through great strides to ensure it is a socially just agency… We recognize there are individuals… who are better served by means other than the criminal justice system. So the individual is currently being evaluated to see if they fit that set of circumstances," Bard said, WBUR News reported.
Ohene, who is currently in a hospital, is still in police custody.
"One of the reasons that we righteously get upset is that officers, once they get to the scene and immediately, before even understanding what's going on around them, they see a black body and they immediately attack. And from what I've seen in this particular case, it didn't happen that way," said Segun Idowu, a police accountability advocate in Boston who noted that it is yet unclear whether the police's use of force was necessary in this case.
"Body cameras would not have prevented what we saw happen in Cambridge on Friday night," Idowu added. "The only thing body cameras would have done is provide a much clearer understanding of what happened and maybe would address a lot of questions that we and the public have about what happened."
In a Sunday statement, Cambridge Mayor Marc McGovern promised to continue working with colleagues to prevent the "horrific treatment of black Americans at the hands of law enforcement."