The image was overwhelming for Hattie Richburg: police body camera video showing plainclothes Baltimore Police detectives restraining her grandson by all of his limbs, then another detective gripping him on the throat and holding a gun to his head for seven seconds.

“This is the first time I’ve seen this” video, Richburg said Wednesday. “But this is not the first time I’ve seen this with our young Black men here in Baltimore City.

“My God. My God.”

Defense attorneys and relatives of Jaemaun Joyner, 24, said they are calling for accountability after viewing the video for the first time last week, about two months after Joyner was arrested. In addition to holding the gun to Joyner’s temple, they accuse police of misleading the court in their official paperwork related to the case.

“What we see here is an act of terrorism,” attorney Tony Garcia said. “An overwhelming use of force in a situation that does not merit it at all.”

Police spokeswoman Lindsey Eldridge said the department began investigating the incident at the time it occurred and had referred it to the State’s Attorney’s Office for review. She said no officers have been suspended.

[Content warning: Video below contains graphic images]

Joyner was attending a vigil May 24 in East Baltimore for a friend who died when detectives said they received a call for an armed robbery and said Joyner matched the description.

That was the officers’ first misstep, Joyner’s attorneys say. The suspected armed robber’s description was that of a 6-foot-tall man wearing a brown hoodie and a ski mask. Joyner, who is 5-foot-7, was wearing a red top. Another man at the vigil, who was wearing a gray hoodie, also was detained.

“The only thing [Joyner] shares with this armed robbery suspect is the color of his skin,” Garcia said.

Body camera footage shows Joyner being held with his arms behind his back by an officer when he appears to try to run, and officers take him to the ground.

Joyner is then shown lying on his back, with officers restraining his arms and legs. Joyner says he can’t breathe and is gasping; Garcia said Joyner previously suffered a collapsed lung and has trouble breathing.

Joyner then yells to people off camera that the officers have put something in his pocket. That’s when an officer — identified in court paperwork as Detective Christian Agard — can be heard saying that Joyner is reaching for something, though his arm appears to be pinned down.

The attorneys said the detective who grips Joyner’s throat and holds the loaded gun to his temple is Detective Connor Johnson, an officer since 2018.

“He really couldn’t breathe,” Joyner’s mother, Rhonda McCain, said. “If he’d have flinched, that [gun] could’ve went off.”

Police recovered a loaded handgun from Joyner’s pocket and also found suspected heroin, according to the statement of probable cause accompanying his arrest. His attorneys did not dispute that he was carrying the items, but noted he has no prior convictions.

Detective Phill Polanco wrote in the probable cause statement that Joyner was reaching for the gun. There is no mention that a gun was held to his head by an officer. And the officers wrote that the armed robbery investigation was ongoing, implying that Joyner was still a possible suspect.

But later during Joyner’s arrest, the robbery victim was brought to the scene and said Joyner was not the person who robbed them.

“It’s all written in a way to confuse the court and ... the criminal justice system, so Mr. Joyner sits in jail,” said another of Joyner’s attorneys, Hunter Pruette.

When the attorneys received discovery evidence in the case last Friday, they brought it to the attention of prosecutors. The case against him was dismissed Monday. A spokesman for the State’s Attorney’s Office said the case was “dismissed for further investigation” and declined to answer more questions.

Joyner was jailed for 54 days and missed out on a job that was to begin in early June, according to his attorneys.

Jessica Rubin, another attorney representing Joyner, said officers are “supposed to try to resolve incidents without using force, let alone excessive force.”

“I’ve read the consent decree and BPD policy, and nowhere does it say it’s reasonable for an officer to hold a gun to someone’s temple,” she said. “Point blank, period. That’s the most egregious thing an officer can do.” She noted that none of the officers involved spoke up while the gun was pressed to Joyner’s head.

Garcia said the fact that Joyner turned out to be in possession of a gun and drugs does not justify the officers’ actions after the fact.

Joyner was present as his attorneys and family spoke to reporters, but did not speak. He occasionally dropped his head.

His mother, McCain, said her older son had been harassed by Detective Daniel Hersl of the disgraced Gun Trace Task Force years ago, and that the FBI tried to speak to them about it during the corruption investigation of the task force. They declined to participate, saying they just wanted to move on. But this time she’s speaking out.

“It can’t happen again,” she said.