Owner of Bar Where University of Virginia Student Was Beaten by Police Says He Was Not Acting Aggressively

In a statement, the owner of the bar where a black University of Virginia student was beaten by police and arrested has refuted allegations that the young man was behaving in an aggressive manner.

Early Wednesday morning, 20-year-old Martese Johnson was left bloodied while being taken into custody by police outside of Trinity Irish Pub in Charlottesville, Va. A fellow UVA student described the scene to the school’s newspaper, The Cavalier Daily:

Martese was talking to the bouncer and there was some discrepancy about his ID. [An] ABC officer approaches Martese and grabs him by the elbow…and pulls him to the side.It happened so quickly. Out of nowhere I saw the two officers wrestling Martese to the ground. I was shocked that it escalated that quickly. Eventually [he was] on the ground, they’re trying to put handcuffs on him and their knees were on his back.

Via his attorney, Trinity Irish Pub owner Kevin Badke released a statement which contradicts the police’s claim that Johnson was belligerent:

There have been reported comments that management of Trinity were belligerent towards Mr. Johnson or that Mr. Johnson was belligerent towards management. Those allegations are patently untrue, as the brief conversation that occurred was polite and cordial. Mr. Badke’s observation was that Mr. Johnson was a disappointed patron.

Badke, who was working the door at the time of the incident, also used the statement as an opportunity to shoot down claims of racial profiling at his bar:

There have been reports that Trinity engages or engaged, in this incident, in racial profiling in not permitting Mr. Johnson to enter. The rationale for allowing patrons to enter—being familiar with the zip code on their own license—is color, gender, race, and ethnicity-blind.