Charges were dropped as soon as those in higher positions of authority found out what had happened, Whitehead said. On Monday morning, Whitehead held a press conference in front of the police station where he was held, demanding that the NYPD issue a public apology.
Whitehead told community officials not to ask him to do anything for the community on their behalf until they have met with him to apologize.
“Why call the police and the police that I call arrest me,” he asked the few who were in attendance. “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense, and at the end of the day, at the end of the day, they brought back memories of how they killed my father.”
Whitehead said his father was killed by police in 1978 during an incident in which officers “illegally detained him. They beat him. They beat him. They strangled him to death, and he took his life.”
Prior to Sunday’s incident with the police, Whitehead shared that he supported the NYPD but felt he needed to hold his press conference to expose injustice.
“They turn their back on me when he treated me like a criminal,” Whitehead said. “I didn’t do anything wrong and you all threw me in the police car against my will—an injustice.”
“I don’t abuse women,” Whitehead told reporters. “You know, so everybody’s looking at me as an abuser—I don’t abuse.”
The woman claimed that a scratch on her cheek came from Whitehead, but Whitehead claims that the wound was self-inflicted, saying, “I grabbed her shoulder and the back of her shirt. I didn’t grab no flesh, and I pushed her out. And I have the video [to prove it].”
According to Whitehead, one of the women who caused the disturbance has been arrested, and the authorities are currently looking for the other.
