[B]URLINGTON — Body camera footage released by the Burlington Police Department has shed new light on the tense interaction last week between teenager Phin Brown and two U.S. Secret Service agents.
A video featuring Brown explaining that he was aggressively frisked by a U.S. Secret Service agent went viral after the March 25 incident on St. Paul Street. Brown said he was disappointed in the city police department’s response to the incident, and said that he believed the federal agents’ actions were racially motivated as he is a person of color.
Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said that while Brown’s concerns were valid, it is not the role of the Burlington police to adjudicate disputes between citizens and federal agents.
One of the Secret Service agents involved complained to BPD officers that today’s youth don’t have any respect for law enforcement, the body camera footage shows.
“You’re 16 years old, you have no rights until you’re 18,” the agent said while talking to BPD officers. “He is not a person of color.”
The department released body camera footage Friday from the four officers who responded, for a cumulative total of 40 minutes of footage. Audio is redacted in certain points, which del Pozo said was to protect the identity of victims, witness and minors, and to prevent the disclosure of the official business of the Secret Service as it pertains to an active criminal investigation.
The four Burlington police officers who responded were Jordan Peterson, Daniel Lowndes, Anthony Brownell and Jake Sawtelle.
The Secret Service has declined to comment on the incident, and a man who answered a call Monday said the agency does not comment on active investigations.
The body camera footage shows Brown explaining to officers that he had gone in and come out of his house before getting accosted by the agents.
“He turns me around, pushes me around, and frisks me down,” he said. “That is not a misunderstanding, that is a violation.”
The two Secret Service agents — one a white male, one a female who appears to be of Asian descent — had a different explanation, saying that they felt that Brown had threatened them as he left the house.
The male agent said that Brown was “kind of immature, a dramatist.”
“He made a signal to us, and I thought he was threatening violence,” the agent said. “So I went down, ‘hey, do you have any weapons, police’ and gave him a quick pat down. So he’s getting all indignant about it, we get it. He says he’s a minor, that’s fine. It’s not like minors can’t have guns.”
The female agent said that Brown mouthed something at them, which the agents considered threatening.
“I didn’t know what he mouthed at us, and he gave us this kind of, ‘What the hell’ look, so of course we’re going to confront him and say, ‘what’s the deal?” she said.
In his viral Facebook video, Brown said that he did nothing to provoke the agents.
The male agent denied that race was a factor in the encounter.
“He’s trying to say he got frisked because he’s a minority, I said, I can’t tell whether you’re black, I have no idea what race you are,” he said.
In one part of the video, Peterson explains to the female agent that Brown lived at the address in question.
“They live here, they had no idea who the hell you guys were because you’re dressed like normal people, which is fine,” he said. “They were just a little taken aback that there were people trying to get into the apartment they live in. I would be too, if I showed up to my house and there were people at my door.”
The footage shows Peterson telling Brown that the situation was a “big misunderstanding,” a conclusion that Brown vigorously disagreed with.
Peterson told Brown that he could take the issue up with the Secret Service agent’s bosses, and that Brown should look up contact information for the Secret Service online.
Brown said that he felt that the officers who responded essentially told him that there was nothing they could do because the Secret Service agents are federal officers.
The footage also shows a discussion between Brown and Sawtelle about whether race was involved in the situation.
“Why does it matter he’s white? What if he’s a black federal officer and did the same thing to you?” Sawtelle said after Brown brought up his race. “You’re injecting race into a situation where race doesn’t have to be involved.”
Brown said he felt race was a factor.
“When a random white person walks up to you and you’re a person of color and they just push you up against a car without explanation, you would be in the same situation that I am in,” he said. “That is why I’m frustrated, he didn’t give me any explanation and pushed me up against a vehicle.”
Brown posted on Facebook following the release of the footage and said that he was disappointed in the way that he had acted, but it was a traumatic event. He said he was even more disappointed in the BPD’s actions.
“Moving forward I’m even more upset and disappointed in the federal agents, who not only lied about the events, but defiled my character by stating ‘he’s not a person of color’, ‘he’s 16 he has no rights until he’s 18’ it is scary to say that people that think that way have so much power,” he wrote. “The official release of the body cam footage I hope has allowed everyone to see the way I was treated and the things that I had to endure.”
Del Pozo met with Tom Baker, assistant special agent in charge at the Secret Service’s Boston field office, on Thursday.
Baker told del Pozo it was important to maintain the integrity of the Secret Service’s ongoing investigation, and that anyone with a complaint can call him at the agency’s Boston office, the chief said.
Baker offered to meet with del Pozo and Brown to discuss the situation, but scheduling did not work out, the chief said. Baker offered to speak with Brown and Brown’s family via telephone, del Pozo said.
Del Pozo said he knew the agents’ identities but did not feel comfortable disclosing them without the permission of the Secret Service.
Overall, del Pozo said he thought the his officers handled the situation properly.
“Officers need to be respectful of the fact they cannot expect to tell someone how he or she ought to feel about whether there is racial bias that motivated something that was done to them,” del Pozo said. “They need to acknowledge that possibility, take it seriously, affirm the person’s concerns and concentrate on the police work at hand and make sure it’s done fairly.”
“If there’s anything we’d want to improve on, that would be it,” he said. “But as far as the police work goes, I think the officers were fair and did the best they could with a difficult situation.”
Brown wrote he was hopeful that the community could make clear that it wouldn’t stand for the federal agents’ behavior.
“I hope together as a community we can make sure that these federal agents are held accountable for their actions & I hope even further that as a community we can make a change a great change come from this event so no CHILD — no matter their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion nor any other factor — have to go through this,” he wrote.
