The Anne Arundel County Police Department has suspended one of its detectives as it investigates a 2019 arrest in which he appeared to kneel on the neck or upper back of a Black man.

Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman and Major Katie Goodwin of the police department announced the suspension and investigation at a community forum on policing Wednesday night. On Tuesday, the day before the forum, Anne Arundel County police chief Tim Altomare announced his retirement — a move that he said was unrelated to the lawsuit but instead related to ongoing reform efforts he disagrees with.

In a suit filed last week, lawyers for 27-year-old Anne Arundel resident Daniel Jarrells allege that he was stopped “without any legitimate probable cause,” thrown to the ground, handcuffed, and pinned to the ground by an officer’s knee. Jarrells was taken to the hospital for minor abrasions after the arrest, according to the lawsuit. In a video of the incident, an officer appears to kneel on Jarrells’ neck or upper back for a minute.

Detective Daniel Reynolds, who is named in the lawsuit as the officer who allegedly put his knee on Jarrells’ neck in the arrest, has been suspended. Jarrells is also suing the police department and two other officers who participated in the arrest.

At the Wednesday evening forum, Goodwin said the department found out about the video of the arrest this week, after the lawsuit was filed and covered in several media outlets.

“It’s important to know this incident happened over a year ago — 18 months ago, in fact — and it was never brought to the police department’s attention,” said Goodwin. “A complaint was never filed with our department. We learned about it at the same time everybody else did.”

Goodwin said the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights legally prohibited her from speaking more about the specifics of the case, but said that the department’s internal affairs unit would be “conducting a complete and thorough investigation.”

Goodwin, who oversees all patrol officers and was representing the department at the forum, added that the department’s relationship with the community “means everything to us.”

“It’s up to us to continue to earn the trust of those that we serve and to rebuild those bridges with all of our community members. And as citizens of Anne Arundel County, you can be assured that we do not accept anything less than respect for all of the lives, including those that we arrest,” Goodwin said.

For Harold “Mo” Lloyd, a youth organizer who spoke at Wednesday’s community forum, the video of Jarrells’ arrest reminded him of what happened to George Floyd, the Black man who was killed in Minneapolis by a police officer who kneeled on his neck. Floyd’s death sparked uprisings across the country — and in Anne Arundel County — over policing and racism.

“This is why we need civilian review boards, this is why we need body cameras — because this happened 18 months ago, and none of us knew about it,” said Lloyd. “I am grateful [Daniel Jarrells] survived, but it really touches me, because I’m like, ‘Wow, it can happen in Anne Arundel County … that is evidential proof that it happened in Anne Arundel County.’”

The two reforms that Lloyd mentioned — body cameras and a civilian review board — were both discussed at Wednesday’s meeting.

County Executive Steuart Pittman said he and the county council added funding for body cameras as a last-minute budget item for next year because of a flood of “over 300 letters” from community members organized by the Youth & College Division of the Anne Arundel County NAACP. Derek Matthews, who is leading the procurement of body cameras, said he anticipates that every officer on the force will have a body camera sometime between January and June of next year.

Pittman also announced that he wants to use the department’s internal investigation into Jarrells’ arrest as a way to experiment with the format of a civilian review board.

“My commitment is to do something different with that internal investigation and allow more of the public to see what’s going on and use that as a pilot for doing civilian review, so that … the community can see how an investigation works and judge for themselves whether our police department does good investigations of their officers,” said Pittman.

Jacqueline Allsup, president of the Prince George’s County NAACP, said in the forum that she looked forward to working with the county on a civilian review board — and hoped that “the public, police, police labor and management, key policy and decision makers and grassroots or community-based organizations, among others” could be involved in a process of clearly defining goals for police oversight.

Pittman also said he would be announcing other reform efforts this summer, including a new no-chokehold policy and a review of the department’s progress and plans.

Several community members in Wednesday’s forum also discussed Tuesday’s news that Anne Arundel police chief Tim Altomare will retire effective August 1. Some praised the chief for strides he made in improving trust between police and the community, while others expressed disappointment that he chose to retire rather than participate in police reform efforts.

In a Capital Gazette op-ed explaining his retirement, Altomare said he was leaving his post because of “a movement in this nation and in this county to remove the teeth of the police.”

Altomare said his decision had “nothing to do” with the case of Daniel Jarrells’ arrest, and he would have held the officers involved accountable in that case.

“I cannot, however, endorse a future in which cop’s rights are stripped away and your officers are treated like the criminals,” Altomare wrote. “They are brave to a fault and faithful unto death.”

In Wednesday’s community forum, Pittman praised Altomare for doubling the percentage of Black officers on the force from 7% to 14% and implementing training on fair and impartial policing for officers. Pittman said the county would be identifying an interim chief and ultimately a permanent replacement, and he “can guarantee you that the community will be involved” in the selection process.