California Congresswoman Maxine Waters went to assist a Black man who had been pulled over by police officers in Los Angeles over the weekend. In a 15-second video that has since accumulated hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter, Waters can be seen intervening the situation to make sure the man was safe during his interaction with police.
The short clip begins after Waters pulls her SUV off the road just ahead of where Los Angeles Police Department officers were questioning the man.
“They stopped a brother so I stopped to see what they were doing,” the Democrat can be heard telling one of the bystanders filming the situation.
Police threatened Waters with a ticket because of where her car was parked. In the clip, Waters says she doesn’t mind being ticketed as long as she’s there to make sure the man is unharmed.
“They say I’m in the wrong place and they’re gonna give me a ticket,” she says in the video. “I said, that’s ok as long as I can watch them.”
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” a woman off-camera says to Waters.
“I will,” she responds.
The now-viral clip arrives almost two months after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers, spurring widespread protests. Speaking with Inside the Issues earlier this month, Waters called for police departments across the country to stop using chokehold restraints, like the one used during the fatal arrest of Floyd and many other African Americans.
“It needs to be done all over the nation and any iteration of that, whether it is the arm or the knee or a piece of equipment, used to cut off the breathing to interfere with the ability for those who are the victims of these tactics to be killed,” the 81-year-old politician said.
See the video of Waters below.