Video shows officers slam handcuffed former NFL player Desmond Marrow

MCDONOUGH, Ga. — A former college football player says he was slammed to the ground and choked until he was unconscious during an arrest by police officers in a McDonough, Georgia, shopping center parking lot.

Desmond Marrow, 30, a former University of Toledo cornerback, detailed the December arrest in a lengthy Facebook post Thursday night. He did not provide the date and exact location of the arrest in the post.

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Henry County police did not immediately answer questions from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the video or the circumstances of the arrest.

“We will have to handle this (Friday) morning,” Capt. Joey Smith said late Thursday.

Video shows Marrow being slammed to the ground by officers. Marrow, according to the post, said officers thought his cellphone, which was in his back pocket, was a gun.

“I’m not even fighting back,” Marrow said in the video. “I’m not even doing nothing, man. What the (expletive)?”

Marrow is heard in the video repeatedly saying he was not fighting back and not doing anything.

“During the arrest, the police knocked my teeth out, slammed me on my head and choked me out until I was unconscious,” Marrow said in the post. Marrow says that before he fainted, he told officers he couldn’t breathe.

He said he suffered a shoulder strain and concussion and that officers said he was resisting arrest, spitting on officers and head-butting them.

“I was fully cooperating with the officers with zero resistance,” Marrow wrote. “I thought I was going to die.”

According to a police report linked to on Facebook by Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta, which The Root reported is representing Marrow, the incident stemmed from an altercation with a driver on Interstate 75. According to the report, Marrow said a while male driver threw a cup of coffee at his car. Marrow said he chased the car because he want to talk to the man and the passenger, who he said was also a while male, about what they did. The report lists the incident date as Dec. 2.

The reporting officer, identified in the report and in Marrow's Facebook post as D. Rose, said he observed Marrow driving aggressively, to which Marrow replied, "That's a fact." The report said Marrow said he was wrong for chasing the car.

A witness said they heard Marrow tell one of the people in the dispute that he would shoot them, the report said. Rose reported that he patted down Marrow for weapons and did not locate any.

Rose said in the report that when he and officers on the call, Officer Donaldson and Sgt. Ingram, decided to arrest Marrow, he made multiple refusals.

“I told Marrow that he was under arrest and told him to put his hands behind his back. He refused,” Rose said in the report.

Rose said he pointed his Taser at Marrow and he and Donaldson were able to handcuff him without incident. When Marrow was told to stand with his feet apart, he refused and struggled against the officers, the report said. Rose said they decided to put Marrow on the ground, resulting in the footage that appears on the Facebook video.

Marrow was arrested and charged with aggressive driving, reckless driving and making terroristic threats.

Marrow was picked up as a free agent by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2012 but was released without playing in an NFL game.

Cox Media Group