For several months, Kyrie Givens and his goat, Lil Bob, have been a notable presence in Southeast Washington without issue. But all of that changed this past weekend.
On Saturday, Givens, 30, and Lil Bob, 1.5, were approached by several Metro Transit Police officers while touring Navy Yard. Givens said he was placed into handcuffs and taken to the police station, only to be released without much of an explanation.
“They did all of that, and I wasn’t even arrested,” Givens said Tuesday in an interview. “They told me it was for a BOLO. I didn’t even know what that was.”
Video of the encounter went viral, with captions falsely claiming Givens was arrested for simply having a pet goat. Online commenters wondered if Givens was arrested for taking Lil Bob on the Metro (Givens had posted a video with him and the goat on the Green Line.)
GOAT ON THE TRAIN WHAT LINE WE ON ? #DC #goat #greenline
By Tuesday, as video of Givens and Lil Bob ricocheted around the internet, Randy Clarke, general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, addressed the detainment during a news conference on Metro crime statistics.
He said Givens was detained in connection to an alert for a “very serious crime” that had nothing to do with taking his goat on the Metro. Still, Clarke cautioned, people shouldn’t do that.
“You can’t have a goat in the system,” he said.
Metro rules prohibit pets from riding on buses or trains unless they’re in a secure carrier.
Metro Transit Police did not name the man who was taken into custody or provide other information about the incident.
In the viral video, Givens can be seen surrounded by four Metro Transit Police officers, two of whom are holding his hands behind his back while another holds Lil Bob’s metal chain leash.
The officers struggle to detain Givens, who later said he was more concerned about Lil Bob’s safety than his own at the time.
In the video, Lil Bob is completely still, watching as the officers push Givens against a police cruiser.
Givens said the transit officers told him the “BOLO,” short for “be on the look out,” was related to charges out of Prince George’s County.
In January, Givens was accused of firing a weapon into an occupied apartment in Hyattsville, Maryland, though no one was injured. He’s maintained his innocence, saying in an online fundraiser that he was falsely accused of the crime.
The Hyattsville Police Department in a news release in January said Givens was identified using “traffic imaging technology,” probably a reference to license-plate readers. His attorney, Thomas Mooney, said Tuesday that the charges were dropped last week because prosecutors could not produce a victim in the alleged crime.
Givens said the most frustrating part of the ordeal was how officers “snatched Bob out of my hands.”
“That’s my baby, man,” Givens said, saying that Lil Bob was “terrified” during the ordeal.
He said he was detained in a district police station in Navy Yard while Lil Bob was kept outside the station, across the street with an officer nearly out of Givens’s line of sight.
“They had him outside,” Givens said. “People was trying to get pictures with him while one of the officers held him.”
Givens said he had to wait for officers to check on the status of the BOLO alert before releasing him. He questioned why police detained him in the first place if they didn’t know whether the alert was still active.
“He was starting to wonder what was going on,” Givens said of Lil Bob’s attitude during his detainment. “I didn’t want to try to make the goat sound to make him comfortable. I’m glad he was on his best behavior, even when the officer grabbed him.”
A self-described animal lover and environmental enthusiast who earned a bachelor’s degree in urban sustainability from the University of the District of Columbia in 2019, Givens said he brings Lil Bob around D.C. to spread positivity.
The entrepreneur has a social media channel under the name “kynobap” and produces street interview videos with Lil Bob, asking passersby questions like, “Do you trust the government?” and their biggest first-date red flags.
Givens described his encounter with the officers as tense and frustrating, but he said it hasn’t deterred him from continuing to traverse D.C. with Lil Bob. The two of them were just out Monday, he said, “bringing smiles to a place that has been dark a long time.”
“It’s bringing light, bringing positivity, and letting people know to just be different if you want to be different,” Givens said.
Givens said he owns six goats in total, including Lil Bob’s mother.
When asked where he got Lil Bob, Givens quipped dryly, “He’s from Southeast.”
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.
The post After brush with the law while with his goat, D.C. man speaks out appeared first on Washington Post.
