Police Release Video Of Them Hogtying Homeless Man Who Eventually Dies

Greensboro police used hogtying to restrain a 38-year-old man, who later died at a local hospital after a late-night encounter in downtown Greensboro on Sept. 8, according to a family member who reviewed the police body-camera video.

The Homeless Union of Greensboro is hosting a press conference with members of the family of the late Marcus Deon Smith tomorrow at the Beloved Community Center. Smith’s family delivered a letter to the city today asking for city council to review the body camera footage, hold four officers involved in the incident accountable, and ban the use of hogtying as a restraint.

Smith’s family said in a statement that the officers’ “actions appear to have caused him to pass away. By ‘hogtying’ Marcus, these officers made it impossible for him to continue breathing.”

A police press release at the time described Smith as a “disoriented suicidal subject” whom officers found running in an out of traffic on the 100 block of North Church Street at 12:45 a.m.

Smith’s family members describe him as being in the midst of “mental health crisis” at the time, but insist, “Marcus was not attacking the officers. He may have been acting erratically, but he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”


The family statement continues: “Marcus asked the officers for help, but instead of being offered help, four white officers used as much force as possible without directly hitting or shooting him. There were nine officers on the scene, and four that came in direct contact with him. They could have used other methods to restrain him. ‘Hogtying’ him was completely unnecessary.”

The family tells a different story.

The family said that although EMS was on the scene, the officers put Smith on the ground and hog-tied him instead of immediately helping him into a waiting ambulance.

“Marcus posed no threat to these police officials,” the family said. “He submitted himself willingly and begged for help, and instead was hogtied, and died as a result. He wasn’t deserving of this. In fact, no human being should be treated this way, especially if all he asked was to be helped in his last moments of his life. In the time that he encountered these police officials, every moment counted, and they did nothing.”

Ronald Glenn, a police spokesperson, defended the police department’s use of hogtying.

“All methods of restraint used are within the national standards,” he said.

Hogtying is a controversial practice. In 2007, the chief of the Novato Police Department in northern California acknowledged in a grand jury report that hogtying “is a form of maximum restraint that could be associated with the risk of positional asphyxia.”