A Black man who is a licensed gun owner in Massachusetts was legally carrying his gun in a holster on his belt when a Boston cop walked up to him, grabbed him by the forearm, and snatched the gun away from him.
“I have a gun license,” said Malcom J. Johnson, who obtained body camera video of the detainment and posted it on YouTube on April 21, explaining in the description that the incident took place on April 4.
“Can I see it?” Boston Police Officer James Verderico asked while still maintaining a grip on his forearm.
“Yes,” replied Johnson as he reached into his wallet to pull out the license.
But Verderico was already calling for backup.
“I have a gentleman with a firearm,” he tells the dispatcher.
“I recovered the firearm; he apparently has a license, but send another unit down here,” the officer added.
But even after he was handed Johnson’s license to carry, he still refused to allow him to leave, even after Johnson told him his Lyft ride had arrived.
“Have a seat,” Verderico tells Johnson. “You’re going to have to wait.”
The video shows Johnson was compliant with Verderico’s orders as the cop told him, “Don’t take it the wrong way.”
But it was also evident that Verderico was unsure about the law regarding open carry.
Massachusetts law allows citizens to carry firearms if they have a license to carry, which is obtained through their local law enforcement agencies.
“Massachusetts allows a person to carry a firearm in public if the person has the appropriate license,” according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“A License to Carry generally entitles a person to carry handguns and other firearms in public spaces.”
But Verderico was unsure.
“It may be legal, but until somebody gets down here, I got the firearm in my possession,” Verderico tells the dispatcher.
“He’s sitting down.”
Watch the shortened video below.
‘I Feared for My Life’
The detainment took place on the 1900 block of the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, a diverse neighborhood of Black, Hispanic, and white residents, but with Black people being the majority.
“Before a single question was asked, I was grabbed, my arm was controlled, and my firearm was taken from me. There was no conversation first—just force,” Johnson explained in the video caption.
The video shows Verderico continuing to express confusion about the law, telling Johnson, “you can’t, you can’t,” but not finishing his sentence.
“You understand the reason why this is going on?” he asks Johnson, who replies that he does not know.
“You walk by behind me with a firearm,” the cop says, which is not true because the video shows Johnson was just standing on the sidewalk when the cop pulls up in his patrol car, steps out, and confronts him.
“It’s not illegal to open carry, is it?” Johnson asks.
“I want to make sure everything is copious,” the cop replies. “Nothing personal, my friend. A lot of violence.”
But the cop, who is holding Johnson’s license to carry in his hand, acknowledges that it was his own department that issued the license.
“And you got it issued by the Boston PD,” he says. “Sorry for any inconvenience, but it kind of struck me.”
And Johnson remains cooperative, telling the cop, “I understand you’re doing your job.”
But Johnson wrote in the caption of his video that he did not protest the detainment because he was afraid of being killed by police.
“I stayed calm because I feared for my life. I was already being physically handled and disarmed,” he said. “In that moment, I knew any reaction could escalate things further. My focus was getting through it safely.”
But Johnson also wrote in the video captions that Verderico’s explanation to detain him “is complete bullsh_t.”
“So respectfully, the justification given is a generalized assumption based on location, not the individualized reasonable suspicion required by law to justify disarming a legally armed person.”
‘Everything is Legit’
Several more cops arrive in three patrol SUVs as Verderico tells him, “You’re going to have to cancel the Lyft.”
A female cop asks Johnson what he does for work, and he tells her he works in security. She then tells Verderico, after running his name through the system, that “he has five active firearms.”
“Yeah, but everything is legit, right?” Verderdico asks.
But he still wasn’t sure so he had another cop run the gun’s serial number to ensure it was not stolen but it was legally registered to Johnson.
Venderico then places the gun back into Johnson’s holster which was attached to his belt, telling him, “everything is active.”
But he also told him, “don’t walk around like that” – even though there is no law in Massachusetts banning open carry.
“I didn’t even know it was out,” Johnson tells him.
Venderico then tells him, “I’m going to take a snapshot of you, alright, just to make sure.”
Johnson explained he is “seeking a formal review of the stop and is exploring potential civil rights claims.”
“This isn’t just about being stopped,” Johnson wrote in the YouTube description on the channel where he normally posts his music under the name, Primo DOLLAZ.
“It’s about how it was done. Being grabbed, disarmed, surrounded, and detained when you’re following the law is something that deserves scrutiny,” he added.
Watch Johnson’s full video below.
