Black Man Sues Pennsylvania Cop Caught on Viral Video Shoving Man Into Traffic, Revealing Pattern of Abuse

Had Harrisburg police officer Marc Howell not been a cop he would likely be facing serious felony charges for shoving a man into oncoming traffic in the middle of an intersection Saturday night — an incident captured on video that has since gone viral, sparking outrage among viewers.

Not surprisingly, Howell has a history of excessive force allegations — as well as a DUI arrest — but none of that has affected his employment in Harrisburg, where the 30-year-old man continues to wear a badge.

The latest lawsuit was filed Tuesday by a Black man named Travis Watkins who said he was standing in the street about 30 feet away from several Harrisburg police officers in 2023 who were aggressively detaining a man for fighting when he yelled out, “Hey, ease up!” to the cops.

That was when Howell, who was not involved in the initial detainment of the man fighting, rushed up to him and yelled, “Back up!” while pepper-spraying him in the face, according to the lawsuit. 

“Get out of the street or I’ll spray again,” threatened Howell, according to the lawsuit which states that Watkins had nothing to do with the fight other than being a witness.

Watkins, who was blinded by the pepper spray, then felt another cop grab him by the wrist, telling him, “motherf_cker, stop resisting!”

That cop, Harrisburg police officer Esteban Restrepo, then grabbed Watkins by his locs and began pulling on them to walk him toward the prison transport vehicle.

Two other Harrisburg cops identified as John Does in the lawsuit then grabbed Watkins arms and started pulling him in different directions while yelling, “stop resisting!”

Watkins ended up jailed on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and public drunkenness which remain pending, according to Pennsylvania online court records. 

“Harrisburg Officer Marc Howell’s use of excessive force against and retaliation against Plaintiff for yelling out, “Hey! Ease up!” as several other officers arrested and roughly cuffed one of the combatants,” states the claim filed by Pennsylvania attorney Leticia C. Chavez-Freed.

“Officer Howell’s act of spraying Plaintiff directly in the face with Mace from under five feet away and without warning Plaintiff — who had neither committed nor was suspected of having committed a crime, who presented no danger, who was not under arrest, and who was thirty feet away from and not interfering with the officers dealing with the melee — was an excessive use of force under clearly established law.”

Watch the recent viral video below.

Second Lawsuit

Howell was listed as a defendant in another lawsuit filed by a man named Jonathan Cody in 2023, claiming he was abused, pepper-sprayed and jailed on false charges in 2022 after he was almost struck by a patrol car driven by Howell.

The lawsuit states that Howell had turned into a pedestrian crosswalk which led to Cody striking the patrol car to keep from being hit. Howell then became defensive and ordered Cody to stand on the sidewalk to wait for more cops.

When the other cops arrived, Howell told them that he was driving his patrol car when Cody struck his car with an object as he was driving past him.

The claim also says the responding cops began mocking Cody for the way he spoke, accusing him of being gay, and sarcastically debating whether he was a “he” or a “she.”

The cops then attacked him, shoving him into a rock wall, then punching, kneeing and elbowing him as they arrested him for disorderly conduct, after which he spent the night in jail.

Then once they placed him in the car with his legs shackled and his hands cuffed behind his back, the cops then pepper sprayed him in his eyes to stop him from complaining about Howell’s driving.

Court records indicate there was a “voluntary dismissal” in Cody’s lawsuit in January which means he chose to withdraw the complaint, meaning there was a possible settlement but that is not stated in court records.

DUI

Howell was a rookie cop fresh out of the police academy and still in his probationary period at the Harrisburg Police Department when he was arrested on DUI charges in 2019, according to Penn Live.

Pennsylvania state troopers said Howell, who was 24 years old at the time, agreed to take a blood test where he measured a blood alcohol content of .132 which is significantly higher than the .08 legal limit.

But local media never followed up on the arrest, and there is no trace of that arrest in Pennsylvania online court records, indicating he was allowed to enter into an Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program for first-time offenders which would have wiped the arrest from their record.

“At least two other local officers have been charged with DUI in recent years, including a former Pennsylvania State Police spokesman and Camp Hill’s former police chief,” Penn Live reported in its initial article on Howell’s arrest.

“Both officers were accepted into their respective county’s Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition programs, for first-time offenders, which eventually wiped the non-violent crime off their records.”

Latest Incident

The most recent incident took place Saturday in downtown Harrisburg where citizens were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day at local bars and clubs.

A video recorded by a woman named Marly Taylor shows a young man who had just been kicked out of a nightclub, standing on the sidewalk at a street corner when an employee of the club approaches him, telling him to “get the f_ck off my property” — even though it is clear he is standing on a public sidewalk.

That was when Howell came charging towards him and shoved him into the street where he was nearly struck by an oncoming car.

“It just seems very unprofessional and the car was close to hitting his head and it just feels like if it had been more of a push that bad things could have happened,” Taylor told WGAL.

The man, who has been identified as Carter Burch, was charged with drunken disorderly conduct. Harrisburg police claim he was involved in a fight before the incident.

But Burch’s sister, Isabella, told local media there was never a fight, only a “misunderstanding” from a week earlier when a bouncer assumed he was harassing a woman who was actually their friend.

“Last weekend, when we were in Nocturnal, my brother was with me and my friend, and my brother leaned down to talk to my friend, and [the bouncer] said that looked like a ‘sticky situation,’” she told WHP-TV.

“The bouncer grabbed him for that situation of talking to my friend” and “threw him across the bar,” ordering them to leave the establishment.

“We came back because they said that they misread the situation, and they never said we were banned or anything,” Isabella said.

However, the bouncer recognized Burch and shoved him down the stairs, Isabella explained.

She said her brother was standing outside the club, waiting for his sister and friends to retrieve their coats when the club employee confronted him, ordering him off the sidewalk.

And that was when Howell came charging, shoving Burch into the middle of the busy intersection. His sister can be seen running into the intersection to protect her brother.

“You can’t really see it in the video much, but seeing it in person — his head was so close to that tire,” she told WHP-TV. “That’s why you can see me in the video run out because I was terrified that his head was going to get smashed by a tire.”