Texas cops who led black suspect by rope knew arrest would ‘look really bad’

One of two white Texas cops on horseback who led a black trespassing suspect by a rope through city streets recognized the poor optics of the arrest, new video shows.

“This is gonna look,” Galveston Police Officer Patrick Brosch said to his partner, Officer Amanda Smith, before stopping himself. “This is gonna look really bad.”

Body camera footage released Wednesday by Galveston officials show the officer making the comment as he discussed the Aug. 3 arrest of Donald Neely.

The 43-year-old homeless man, whose handcuffs were “clipped” to a rope, was led down a street to a Mounted Patrol Unit staging area after being busted for criminal trespassing.

“You wanna make him walk for a little bit?” Brosch asked Smith, according to the footage.

“You got shoes?” Smith then asked Neely, prompting him to say that he did.

“Come here, Mr. Neely,” Brosch told the man, who had been arrested at the same building six times earlier this year, according to the Galveston County Daily News.

Brosch then dismounted before admitting to Smith that the pair’s plan to walk Neely some four blocks away would most likely attract attention, video shows.

“You’re doing good, Mr. Neely,” Brosch later said during the interaction. “But we gotta do what we gotta do too, ya know?”

Galveston Police Chief Vernon Hale has apologized to Neely for the “unnecessary embarrassment” during the incident and announced that the department would no longer use the technique, which had been previously deployed to control large crowds.

Hale also accused Brosch and Smith of showing “poor judgment” during the arrest but claimed the officers had no malicious intent behind their actions. Some critics, including the president of Houston’s NAACP chapter, said the cops showed a clear lack of respect toward people of color.

The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office conducted an administrative review of the arrest, during which Neely said he wasn’t embarrassed by the arrest, the Galveston County Daily News reports.

“I am studying the report now and will use its findings to make decisions in the near future about the next steps for the department,” Hale said in a statement released Wednesday.