Another Black family is speaking out about Pennsylvania police following a Black man’s arrest outside his own home allegedly for loitering.
Brandon Alvin said he was talking to his cousin outside his home in Chester Township when police accused him of hanging in the area without a purpose and pepper-sprayed him the night of Sept. 21, according to WPVI TV.
The incident predates another encounter police initiated with a Black family accused of loitering outside its home in the same town.
The area is about 20 miles southwest of Philadelphia.
“I just want them to stop bothering us. That’s all,” Alvin told WPVI. “I mean, I ain’t looking for nothing extra, just want it to be known that what they out here doing, it ain’t right.”
Police saw Alvin leaning against an SUV, told him he shouldn’t be there and tried to handcuff him, according to an arrest affidavit WPVI obtained.
Alvin refused and said he had done nothing wrong, authorities claimed in the affidavit.
Kevin Mincey, Alvin’s attorney, told KWY radio the family had just returned home from celebrating the birthday of Alvin’s mother.
“He was pepper-sprayed two times. I think it was four or five police officers that arrested him,” Mincey told the radio station. “He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.”
Mincey said he thinks Officer Pasquale Storace, who arrested Alvin, targeted him.
“Three times in 10 days with the same officer, and we know that there have been other incidents involving this officer and other Chester Township officers,” Mincey told KWY. “We think it’s a policy of Chester Township.”
The other Black family who spoke out about Chester Township police saw four of its relatives arrested.
Cellphone footage CBS Philly obtained showed a man identified as Ramir Briggs being pulled over the railing of his family’s porch on Shannon Street in Chester Township following a loitering accusation.
“We just getting home,” a woman could be heard saying in the video.
Keith Briggs told CBS Philly police used a Taser on him and put him in the back of a cop car. Officers claimed in arrest records that he had also refused to disperse and was cursing at officers.
Some family members were even arrested twice in two days for doing nothing more than standing outside of their house, they told CBS Philly.
Alvin’s wife, Danielle, also captured his arrest on cellphone video.
In it, a man can be heard yelling: “He lives here.”
“You hear about it all the time, but to actually have it happen to a family member,” Danielle said. “My husband, my kids were in the window. His cousins were in the yard.”
