‘THAT WAS CRAZY’

Black Documentary Filmmaker Captures Crazy Footage of Police Pepper-Spraying His Face

Christopher Frierson thought he would be safe with police as a member of the press, but said: “I was wrong.”

A black documentary filmmaker has captured footage of a NYPD police officer pepper-spraying him in the face—leaving him temporarily blind—despite the fact he was wearing a badge identifying him as press. Christopher Frierson, 37, kept his camera rolling after he was sprayed by an officer in Brooklyn. He told The Guardian: “That was crazy to me... I had never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been to a lot of protests. I’d assumed they wouldn’t do anything to me because I was press and I had a camera in my arms, but I found out that I was wrong.” Frierson said he was unable to see for more than 10 minutes—but was helped to safety by protesters. “From the footage, you can see they were all white people, and that means a lot to me,” he said. “From the perspective of a black man who has just been maced, here were white people, in a society where white people have all the power, wanting to help me.” A few days later, Frierson went back to the same spot to talk to police officers about what they were doing, and said that he has “no animosity towards the cops who sprayed me.”