'What are you doing here? Keep walking!': Army sergeant threatens young Black man for being in his neighborhood
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 3 years ago • 27 commentsBy: Raw Story - Celebrating Years of Independent Journalism
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Screenshot via Shirell Johnson/Facebook
A disturbing video has emerged on social media, showing a man who has been identified as a U.S. Army sergeant harassing and threatening a Black man who was walking through a South Carolina neighborhood.
The video, first uploaded to Shirell Johnson's Facebook page, shows a man identified by social media users as U.S. Army sergeant first class Jonathan Pentland walking alongside a young Black male only identified as Deandre, asking him what he's doing in the neighborhood and aggressively telling him to leave. At one point in the video, Pentland pushes Deandre.
"The young black male's name is Deandre. We did not know him nor had ever met him until last night," Johnson wrote in a Facebook post. "The young lady recording the video we also did not know until last night. She saw the young man in distress and knew he didn't do anything wrong so she started videoing for his safety!"
"We waited with [Deandre] until the officer arrived and we repeatedly informed the officer that D was assaulted (you all didn't see the second instance) when [Pentland] slapped his hand and his phone fell and cracked," Johnson wrote. "The officer told us that his supervisor told him that he could only charge the white guy with malicious injury to property and not assault! Deandre was calm throughout and he had been in that neighborhood-[The Lakes at Barony Place] walking plenty of times and he lives in the summit!"
This is by no means condoned by any service member. We will get to the bottom of this ASAP.
— Fort Jackson Commanding General (@fortjacksoncg) April 14, 2021
As Heavy.com points out, Twitter users sent the video to accounts associated with Fort Jackson, resulting in Fort Jackson Commanding General Milford Beagle Jr. tweeting, "This is by no means condoned by any service member. We will get to the bottom of this ASAP."
The video doesn't show what led up to the confrontation, but it starts with Pentland telling Deandre, "go away right now." Deandre responds by telling Pentland to call the police. Pentland's wife, Cassie Pentland, tells him they've already been called. The couple then accuses Deandre of "picking fights" with people in the neighborhood.
"What is it that you are doing here?" Pentland asks him aggressively.
"Walking." Deandre replies.
"Then walk," Pentland fires back.
Deandre then tells Pentland that he's walking back to his house.
"Well you've been here like 15 minutes now ... Walk away," Pentland says. "Walk away right now. You need help? I'm happy to help."
Deandre then accuses Pentland of hitting him.
"There's a difference between pushing you," Pentland says before telling him he is "aggressing on my neighborhood" and violently shoving him.
"You either walk away or I'm going to carry your a** out of here," Pentland says.
When Deandre tells Pentland not to touch him, Pentland says, "What are you going to do?"
"Let's go, walk away. I'm about to do something to you," Pentland says. "You better start walking right now. … You're in the wrong neighborhood motherf*cker. Get out."
Pentland's wife, Cassie, can be heard telling Deandre, "Sir, you're acting like a child. Move on. You picked a fight with some random young lady that's one of our neighbors." Deandre tells her that he didn't pick a fight with anyone, and that he was the one who was confronted first.
Johnson wrote on Facebook that Deandre lives in a neighborhood not far from where the incident occurred and has walked through the neighborhood "plenty of times."
Watch Johnson's video below:
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Deandre looks high. Other than that I'm not sure what his crime was.
At one point the white guy tells him "you are in the wrong neighborhood".
video at link
'What are you doing here? Keep walking!': Army sergeant threatens young Black man for being in his neighborhood
It obvious what his crime is, ''walking while black''.
Deandre looks high??? Jjjeeezzzz John - do you know how race laden that comment is?? "Yeah, well he's Black so he must be on something".
Gads.
He doesnt look high because he's black. He looks high because he looks high. Maybe he's not , maybe he has a slow reacting personality. Either way I am not a racist.
It is a hoot though to watch you guys make such claims about me and others from time to time.
Still luv ya tho.
If 1st Sgt Pentland is still active duty, he might have just flushed the remainder of his military career down the toilet. Seems like Pentland has some serious anger issues to say the least and definitely needs treatment. Deandre is definitely deserving of a apology and a new phone from the Pentlands at the very least.
He is on active duty and stationed at Fort Jackson SC.
He's a real asshole. He told that poor guy to get out of his face and it was the steroid ridden asshole who was in his face.
He assaulted him - by pushing him like that.
All around physical and verbal assault.
What an asshole.
As far back as the early 1980s, everyone's annual performance evaluation (if they were compliant) ended with.....
"....actively supports the Navy's policies regarding equality...Etc.. Etc..."
In LMET classes, they really hammered home gender and racial equality policies as you advanced in paygrade. I can see this video coming up in one of those classes....
Great. Watch him get discharged and then get a job as a cop.
Scary thought.......
I want to laugh, but you are probably right.
The officer told us that his supervisor told him that he could only charge the white guy with malicious injury to property and not assault!
I hope he at least did that. Not for restitution so much as the opportunity to make that racist’s blood pressure rise one point for every dollar he has to spend on a black man.
Idiot. Racist. Bully. This guy is checking all the boxes.
What does he think he’s going to? Punch a guy for walking through his neighborhood? And, by the way, it looks like he has the support of everyone else out there, from the their comments. You’d think some dangerous rabid animal had just come down the street, the way it’s all hands on deck out there.
And some want to claim racism is dead?
Not by a long shot.
An update....
Jonathan Pentland, who is a U.S. Army soldier assigned to Fort Jackson, was arrested at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday and was booked at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center. If found guilty, Pentland faces a $500 fine and 30 days in jail.
"The leaders at Fort Jackson in no way condone the behavior depicted in the video posted recently," Brig. Gen. Milford Beagle Jr., Fort Jackson's commander, said in a statement. "This action deeply impacts our community -- the neighbors in the Summit, the city of Columbia, Richland & Lexington counties, and our Army family."
"I ask that our communities and leaders exercise a degree of patience, affording Sherriff Lott and law enforcement investigators to account for the full measure of events before, during, and after the incident that was recorded," the statement added.
Soooooo..... A Brig. General makes a statement about the Sargent's action....... Pentland is toast!
I hope so, the man is a pig.
Yep. His career is finished because not only is this an embarrassment and is not in any way in line with the Army’s states support for equality, but this also directly undermines the good order and discipline within his unit.
Amazingly enough a lot of black people serve in the military, and... well let’s just say he will not have a lot of support in his unit when word that he was harassing and threatening a black dude who was just walking by his house one morning.
Why didn't the original cops take the guy into custody and book him?
Why does it take a viral video to get anyone to do anything about this kind of shit?
He'll be lucky if they don't court martial him to make a statement now that top brass has eyes on the issue. I'm sure there was a lot of chewed ass yesterday.
Perhaps Pentland is part of the ''White Supremacists'' that the military is concerned about.
If so I'd expect a big dog and pony show with lots of press releases to demonstrate how really serious they take this issue.... yeah... really serious.
There was an article posted yesterday about how the military handles the discharge of White Supremacists'' and it's not good they are given an administrative discharge which does not show why they were discharged which of course allows them to go to work in a police department.
I can't remember who posted the article but it was damn interesting.
I don't think this guy has a chance of getting a job as a cop when he's discharged. Maybe a mall cop...
I read it. The only thing a unit commander cares about is completing the mission. Making some big deal over a troublemaker and drawing things out for months on end isn't a career winning plan. Particularly since just being a racist asshole isn't against the UCMJ. I've personally seen an administrative discharge take as little as 4 days to process. Convening a court martial is a messy long drawn out affair. The military has a long tradition of covering shit up and keeping things out of civilian control.
There are millions of people in the United States that are like this guy Jonathan Pentland. Many millions. Maybe not like him in every particular, but like him in the sense that they do not accept black people in "their neighborhood" and like him in the sense that they would not object much to what he did, even though they may not have the nerve to go quite that far themselves. This is an example of what is known as "everyday racism".
Read on a news article elsewhere that this guy is a drill instructor. Not any more. I have known many drill instructors over the years, both Marine and Army, and by and large they were good decent individuals who did their job and left the aggression and anger on the drill field and recruit barracks and then went home their families. Then there were the few bad ones who could not separate their jobs from home. This guy strikes me as one of the the few bad ones. Very high divorce rates among those.