The New York bishop who was robbed of around $1 million in jewelry during a livestreamed service in July was removed from his church by police on Sunday after video appeared to show him grabbing a woman and pushing her.
Bishop Lamor Whitehead, 44, was preaching at the Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries church in Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood when someone in the congregation started yelling inaudibly off-camera. He paused the Sunday service to respond to the person.
“You wanna come preach?” he’s heard saying toward the end of the livestreamed service. “Come on up here. I’m gonna make you famous.”
As a woman approaches him, video appears to show the bishop grabbing her hair by the back of her neck and pushing her off-camera.
“Grab her out,” Whitehead is heard saying out of view of the livestream.
Officers who responded to a 911 call about the dispute removed Whitehead and the woman from the church and took them to the 69th precinct, according to the New York Police Department.
Police said the woman, identified as 47-year-old Tarsha Howard, was recording the church service. When asked to stop and leave the church, she “began to antagonize the parish Bishop and approached him on stage. The Bishop then physically removed the female from the location,” according to police.
Howard was charged with trespassing and disrupting religious service. Whitehead was not arrested, police said.
Whitehead disputed that in a video posted to Facebook, saying the NYPD arrested him and put him in a holding cell.
“The NYPD failed me because they arrested me,” he said. “They would’ve never did it to a rabbi. They would’ve never did it to a priest. But because of the color of my skin, they arrested me.”
Once “higher-ups” found out he was at the precinct, Whitehead added, charges against him were dropped.
“You put me in prison and then let me out and say, ‘Oops, you made a mistake?’ ” he said in the video. “But you don’t get to arrest me for no reason, I’m going to protect my family.”
The bishop alleged in another video that he allowed Howard to “speak her piece” and only stepped in once she started moving toward his wife and 10-month-old daughter.
“I allowed the lady to talk, speak her piece, and curse me out and do whatever she wanted to do, but then when she said ‘and she’ and started to throw threats at my wife and started to charge at my wife, that’s what you guys saw,” he said. “My wife have my baby in her hand, and we’re not going to have another rendition of my daughter being in harm’s way or my wife being in harm’s way.”
Whitehead was referring to the incident earlier this summer, when three gunmen burst into his church and made off with $1 million worth of jewelry during a July service.
“When I see them come into the sanctuary with their guns, I told everybody to get out, everybody just get out,” he said in a video posted to Instagram following the robbery. “I didn’t know if they wanted to shoot the church up or if they were just coming for a robbery.”
Whitehead held a news conference Monday in front of the 69th precinct where he was taken following the church dispute.
He said he plans to file a complaint against the NYPD.
Police did not respond to further requests for comment.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
