The officer was among a group responding to looting inside a downtown T-Mobile store at about 10 p.m.
In the video, onlookers nearby can be heard yelling for the officer to remove his knee from the man’s neck before his colleague drags his knee off his neck while they struggle to handcuff the man.
The footage was recorded by photojournalist Matt McKnight, who said in his Instagram post that the officer had been seen holding his knee on the neck of another person seconds earlier.
On Sunday, Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best issued a statement about the peaceful protest that had turned violent on Saturday, resulting in a number of injuries to police and protesters.
“The Seattle Police Department was prepared to facilitate the peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights,” Best said in her statement.
Best described how the protest became violent, with demonstrators using rocks and Molotov cocktails that burned businesses as well as police and private vehicles.
During Saturday’s protest, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin declared a citywide curfew from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m.
A post shared by Matt M. McKnight (@mattmillsphoto) on May 31, 2020 at 8:15am PDT
“This gave officers additional tools to disperse crowds, but the priority remains addressing violent crime and destruction by offenders already disobeying dispersal orders,” Best said in a statement.
Seattle police did not respond to Newsweek’s request for comment on the officer’s conduct.
The knee-on-the-neck technique was also used by then–Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin to subdue an already-handcuffed George Floyd on May 25.
Floyd’s arrest was captured on video, which showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, while Floyd said repeatedly that he could not breathe and that he was in pain.
Floyd was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.
An independent autopsy revealed that Floyd’s death was caused by asphyxiation from sustained pressure, USA Today reported on Monday.
Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter; he and the other three former police officers at the scene could face federal charges.
Terrence Floyd, George Floyd’s younger brother, condemned the violent protests and asked that protests find another way to channel their anger.
“I’m outraged too,” he told ABC News. “I feel that sometimes I get angry.… I want to go crazy. My brother wasn’t about that. You’ll hear a lot of people saying, ‘He was a gentle giant.’”
