US screenwriter Alex O’Keefe has shared footage of himself being ‘pulled off’ a train over the way he was sitting.
O’Keefe is a staff writer on Disney Plus FX series Emmy-winning series, The Bear, for which he won a 2023 Writers Guild Award with his colleagues, as well as working for political figures such as Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey.
The TV writer created a new Instagram account, named dotgov, to share a video of the incident on a Metro-North train travelling to Connecticut, and has gained over 11,000 followers in just a few days.
In the video, he narrated what was happening as a police officer put him in handcuffs while he accused a ‘white woman’ who was sitting near him of ‘calling the police to arrest the one Black dude on the train’.
‘I haven’t anything illegal,’ he declares in the video as he is removed from the train. ‘I am sitting on a train and one white woman didn’t like my presence,’ he continues as the police tell him to ‘stop resisting’.
In another video taken by a bystander in the same post, he is seen facing the wall, surrounded by four police officers.
Recounting the story in the caption, he continued: ‘An old white woman got on the train and immediately pointed at me and told me to correct how I was sitting. I refused, so she went to the conductor and complained.
‘The conductor called the police and stopped the train. While waiting for the police to arrive, the old Karen’s friend said: “You’re not the minority anymore.”
‘The police told me to leave the train, I refused and asked what was I doing illegally. They said I was disturbing the peace by not leaving the train. They pulled me off the train and arrested me without even talking to [the woman] who reported the one black person on the train.’
He shared he was ‘detained and interrogated’. Then added: ‘Only black folks stayed nearby and recorded the arrest. When I demanded a lawyer and reminded them they didn’t even take a statement from the woman who complained, they eventually released me.
‘This country is growing more psycho by the day. What will you do about it?’
In response to the video, MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) told NBC News a security video from the train showed he had been sitting with his legs stretched across an adjacent seat, which is against the rail line’s rules.
The statement explained that the conductor called the police after O’Keefe refused to exit the train and handcuffed him after which he was briefly held at a Bronx train station at 10:30am.
He was then given a summons accusing him of disorderly conduct, before being allowed to board a new train to his destination.
MTA Chairman Janno Lieber also addressed the incident earlier this week when holding a separate news conference.
Lieber said: ‘The police have to get involved because somebody won’t take his feet off the seat?’
Later adding: ‘Just take your feet off the seat. It’s that simple. And respect other passengers. But we’ll take a look at the video and deal with all the dramas that seem to come out of these simple interactions these days.’
In response to Associated Press on Monday, he said he was working and needed to run an interview request by his legal team, adding that he was ‘wary of being the center of a culture war in this political climate.’
Metro has reached out to MTA for comment.
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