A Black man who lives in Anne Arundel County alleges in a recent lawsuit that he was forced from his car at gunpoint in February 2019 and eventually forced to the ground by county police officers—one of whom appears to place a knee on the man’s neck or upper back in a video of the altercation.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday by Joseph Greenwald & Laake on behalf of Odenton resident Daniel Jarrells, 27, sues three county police officers as well as the county government itself and alleges that Jarrells was stopped “without any legitimate probable cause.”

“In their report immediately after the stop, the police did not even attempt to invent a pretext for the stop; months later, officers claimed that Daniel was ‘suspicious’ because he was driving a two-door vehicle with a Lyft sticker on it,” the lawsuit states. (A copy of the police report that mentions the Lyft sticker as “suspicious” is dated February 14, 2019.) After being pulled over, Jarrells was ordered to step out of the car, placed in handcuffs, searched, and led into a police vehicle, according to the lawsuit.

Some time after Jarrells was placed in the police vehicle, the officers removed him and “threw him to the ground,” according to the lawsuit.

“As Daniel lay handcuffed and helpless on the ground, one of the officers kneeled on Daniel’s neck, and at one point slammed his knee into Daniel’s prone body, presenting a serious and unjustified risk of injury or death,” the lawsuit states.

In a video of the incident, captured by a neighbor, an officer appears to place his knee against Jarrells’s neck or upper back for at least one minute. A second officer also appears to kneel on and restrain Jarrells’s legs. Jarrells can be heard yelling, “I can’t even breathe.”

After his arrest, Jarrells was taken to a hospital to be treated for abrasions and charged with “minor offenses” that were later dismissed, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages for “assault, battery, mental and emotional distress and deprivation of constitutional rights.”

A spokesperson for the Anne Arundel County Police Department says the department can’t comment on an open court case.

The lawsuit also requests that the county ban police officers from placing their knees on the necks of arrestees, from restraining arrestees in ways that can block their airways, and from using potentially deadly force when an arrestee poses no lethal danger.

In recent weeks, police departments across the country have moved to ban or limit the use of neck restraints due to their potentially lethal impact, most notably after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by holding his knee to Floyd’s neck for roughly eight minutes.

In a police report filed the day after the incident, officer Daniel Reynolds says Jarrells, who was accompanied by another Black man who was taken into custody, was “irate, yelling/screaming and still kicking” when he was removed from the patrol vehicle.

“I placed my knee on Jarrells’ right shoulder into [sic] an attempt to gain control,” Reynolds writes in the report. Jarrells “continued to try to twist his body and move his head from right to left. Grabbed [Jarrells’] head at that time in an attempt [to] get him to stop.”

In a list of frequently asked questions the county police department released last month, police chief Timothy Altomare writes the department “does not teach any type of neck restraint.”

“Force to the head and neck is considered deadly force by the AACoPD. We are trained through our entire career to avoid impacting or restricting the neck,” Altomare says in the FAQs. “As it specifically relates to the Minnesota incident, we are repeatedly trained that the position Mr. Floyd was placed in should be avoided for long periods of time more than seconds to avoid the risk of positional asphyxia.”

Altomare writes that there are instances when a neck restraint could be necessary.

“We cannot say that a neck restraint is NEVER to be used because there IS a possibility in which a deadly force encounter may occur and that position is all the officer has to save a human life,” he says in the FAQs. “Other than the active defense of human life in which no other option exists, any type of neck restraint is prohibited.”

Yet, as the lawsuit notes, the Anne Arundel County Use of Force policy, issued after the incident, does not specifically address the use of neck restraints.

“Moreover, the detectives clearly were not ‘actively defending human life,'” the lawsuit states, when they allegedly followed Jarrells, arrested him, brought him to the ground while in handcuffs and “used a knee to strike and restrain plaintiff’s neck.”