Black Lives Matter protesters gathered in Washington Park on Wednesday after a video of an arrest in Albany was seen online. That arrest is now under internal review to see if there was an unjust use of force on the part of the police. 

The arrest took place on Tuesday in Albany on South Pearl Street. The two people in the video tell Spectrum News it all started because they were there recording the arrest of another man, to make sure his rights weren’t violated. 

The man and his fiance tell us the situation quickly escalated and they believe they were wrongly arrested by police. They tell us they were tazed, thrown to the ground, and arrested. 

Since Tuesday night, the charges have been dropped against both the man and the woman arrested. They believe the police were the ones that escalated the situation and say this happened because of the color of their skin. 

“You can’t blame it on what’s going on right now. There’s no justification for assaulting a law-abiding citizen,” said Kimani Addison.

“Even though they say our charges are dropped, it’s not enough,” said Desiree Shuman.

Mayor Kathy Sheehan has put out a statement calling the video “troubling” and says it falls short of the standards she expects from the police department. 

Now, this comes during protests and unrest seen in all 50 states and worldwide after the death of George Floyd, who died after a police officer kneeled on him for more than eight minutes. Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins says tensions are high for both protesters and police right now and says he cannot yet say if excessive force was used until the internal review takes place. 

“Sometimes the discretionary decision may not be the right decision and it doesn’t mean the officer was trying to violate rights or be unjust. It may possibly be simply the officer made a discretionary decision under stress, under the tension of the moment, that may have not been the best one," Hawkins said.

He says he’s not sure how long the internal investigation will take but there were officers wearing body cameras which internal affairs will review along with the cell phone footage of the incident.

Hawkins also says the officers will not be suspended while this review takes place. However, he’s not sure if those officers will be out patrolling the streets or not. 

"The officers aren’t a threat to the community, I'm sure. So it’s just a matter of us taking a deep dive into this incident,” Hawkins said.