In the roughly 10 minutes of video from one officer’s camera obtained by Target 12 through a public records request, police are seen walking through crowds of people, many of whom are drinking in public. Trash and liquor bottles are all over the ground in the area of Broad Street and Verndale Avenue.
Watch the bodycam footage below:
Police then start to try and move the crowd from the street, before the video shows a man in a white T-shirt with a black satchel.
“Stop resisting, man!” an officer said.
Police can also be heard yelling at the crowd to back up.
“Back up or everyone’s getting sprayed!” an officer yelled.
The video is then largely focused on the man in the white T-shirt, who police identified as Adonis Placencio. He’s heard yelling back at police.
“We was leaving! That’s [expletive] crazy, bro!” Placencio said.
The scene becomes more chaotic, but what happened in those moments was out of view from the officer’s body-worn camera.
“What are you arresting me for, bro?” Placencio said with his hands behind his back. “I didn’t do nothing, bro!”
A scuffle ensues, and the video shows police holding Placencio’s chest trying to restrain him.
At one point, an officer crouches down clutching his head, apparently in pain.
“Oh my God. Alright, alright alright,” the officer said. “I got you!”
“I didn’t do nothing,” Placencio told police.
That night, cellphone video quickly began circulating on social media. An officer, later identified as Sgt. Peter Salmons, could be seen punching Placencio in the stomach and head while people in the crowd yelled and tried to get him to stop.
( Story continues below video. )
Providence Police Col. Oscar Perez defended Salmon’s use of force at a press conference the following week.
“This incident was reviewed and documented properly,” Perez said. “It was reviewed by supervisors, it was reviewed by internal affairs, and it was just a use of force that needed to be applied to compel the compliance from this individual.”
Officers noted in the incident report that Placencio was trying to conceal his satchel from police “in a nervous manner.”
“While Placencio was trying to discard the satchel within a group of people and hand it off to someone else, he was maintaining constant eye contact with police while trying to take the satchel off and then putting it back on as police kept an eye on what he was doing,” the report said.
While trying to “maintain positive control over the satchel,” police said they struggled to take Placencio into custody as the large crowd “began to close in behind officers.” (The portion of the report where police explained how they were able to regain control over Placencio was redacted.)
Police later determined that a firearm was in Placencio’s satchel and identified it as a 9mm Smith & Wesson. The incident report stated there were 13 bullets in the magazine. Suspected narcotics were also found, according to police.
Placencio was charged with two felonies related to possessing illegal firearms, plus disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He did not enter a plea in court and was later presented as a violator, stemming from a 2021 felony firearms charge.
More interactions with police continue throughout the video. At one point, a woman tried to get a man to back off from the officers.
“Back the [expletive] up,” an officer said. The officer holds out a canister.
“Did I do something to you?” the man said to police.
The video shows something is sprayed from the canister, and a group of people turn their heads and walk away. Then a woman comes back and starts yelling at the officers, but is stopped by police spraying something from the canister.
An officer is later heard on camera telling police he “sprayed a few.”
Police are also heard discussing moments that happened off-camera, which was noted in the incident report.
“[Expletive] threw [expletive] beer,” one officer said.
“I’m gonna start smashing people,” another officer said.
Police can be heard asking the crowd to go home, but many people continue to stand around. Engines can be heard revving as some are gridlocked trying to leave.
“We are wildly outnumbered,” one officer said.
Officers are heard continually yelling at the crowd to “go home or get locked up.”
Officers then begin to start talking with each other about what else they encountered.
“That guy they arrested had a gun,” an officer said.
Six people were arrested in one incident that night, but police said 10 arrests were made and two firearms were seized overall that day.
Alexandra Leslie ( aleslie@wpri.com ) is a Target 12 investigative reporter covering Providence and more for 12 News. Connect with her on Twitter and on Facebook .
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