KEY POINTS

  • The arrest of an alleged undercover FBI agent went viral online
  • It was a mistaken identity so the alleged “agent” was then released
  • The video trended amid the continuous mass demonstration of George Floyd’s death
  • Some netizens, however, claimed that video was taken a year ago
  • Also, the man who was arrested was reportedly not an FBI agent

A video depicting two policemen arresting a black man went viral amid the mass demonstrations over the death of George Floyd. The man was allegedly an undercover FBI agent but some netizens claimed otherwise.

A video showing an encounter between a black man and two policemen went viral on Twitter, Monday. The black man was arrested and handcuffed because of mistaken identity. According to the report of News One, one of the policemen got hold of the man’s wallet. After checking his identification, they found out that they arrested the wrong man.

Tweets of several netizens claimed that the black man arrested by the two law enforcers was an FBI agent. The video was shared multiple times and currently has around 241,000 retweets.

Information about the identity of the people concerned was scarce but as the video showing the arrest of the alleged FBI agent trends, some netizens clarified the facts behind the viral video.

But there were claims and a Twitter conversaton that the video was old and the incident happened a year ago.

A post from a Twitter user, @DrRJKavanagh, shed some light amid the search for additional information about the trending arrest of the alleged FBI agent.

She said that the viral video purporting to show the police arresting an undercover FBI agent was a year old and the man arrested was not an FBI agent. She uploaded a screenshot of an online conversation referring to the video in support to her tweet.

A man claiming he recorded the incident revealed that the person being harassed was "Atter." Referring to who people believed was an FBI agent, he said that Atter was his childhood friend.

“At[t]er is the king of making you look stupid,” a screen-grab of his reply shows. No further details, or the full name of 'Atter' was available.

Another netizen said she was surprised that the man who was responsible for recording the said video, which went trending online, didn’t know that people have been tweeting about it.

@DrRJKavanagh, whose Twitter profile says she is a criminal defense and civil rights attorney, mentioned the importance of verifying the time, date and place of a video tweet in one of her Twitter replies. She suggested need for being skeptical if the original tweet of a video that claimed to show current events did not have at least some additional details.

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