Sarah Comrie, a physician assistant from San Diego, is 34 years old. She got a job at Bellevue, a public hospital in New York that treats many people who the city's for-profit hospitals might refuse to treat, such as the uninsured, the homeless, and members of the Rikers Island jail population. The Times featured her in 2020 as one of the professionals who put their health at danger to care for others during the pandemic.
Comrie's life has been turned upside down today. She's been doxxed and has received death threats. Bellevue gave her a leave of absence. She had to employ an attorney. She is well-known as a result of a viral video she appeared in in May.
Now that the heat of the moment has passed — and most people who viewed the video have likely forgotten about it — we would be well to pause and reflect on what transpired before, during, and after that brief occurrence, as well as the implications for the participants. For the sake of the rest of us, we should consider how we perceive and digest digital outbursts that capture our attention and emotions. We should be concerned about the fallout.
Here's what we know for certain about the Comrie incident. On May 12, a 90-second video of an argument over a rental bike between Comrie, who was pregnant at the time, and a Black teenager was filmed and then released online, gaining tens of millions of viewers on Twitter, TikTok, and other sites. Comrie, dressed in hospital scrubs, is straddling a bike as a young man holds it with one hand near the handlebars. Their bodies are entwined slightly. Comrie repeatedly requests assistance in an agitated tone. "This is not your bike," the young man says, chuckling exasperatedly.
He and his friends are laughing and joking around. Comrie makes a motion as if steering the bike away at one point. The young man keeps his grip on the bike. "Get off me, dude," she tells him.
Comrie snatches one of the young men's cell phones. "How come you stole his phone?" Off-camera, a voice says, and she appears to hand it back as he grabs it from her.
"You're hurting my fetus," she continues, clearly alluding to the way the young man's arm is in contact with her abdomen. "I'm not touching you," he says back. "You're putting your stomach on top of my hand."
A man dressed in hospital scrubs approaches to help. One of the young men accuses Comrie of crying briefly and then she steps away from the bike. One of the other young men says, “Your baby going to come out retarded.” The video ends shortly thereafter.
Many who watched the video were certain of what they saw. The civil rights attorney Ben Crump, in a subsequently deleted post on Twitter, accused Comrie of attempting to steal the bike and called her behavior “unacceptable,” an example of “the type of behavior that has endangered so many Black men in the past.” The website Anti-Racism Daily accused Comrie of trying to “weaponize her tears.” The Miami Times called her “an aggressive woman.” Tariq Nasheed, a filmmaker and social media personality, called her “a suspected white supremacist.” A blog post on the website Daily Kos said she “weaponized her whiteness over a stupid bikeride.” NYC Health + Hospitals, the network that includes Bellevue, issued a statement to CBS News describing the video as “disturbing.” A local NBC News affiliate sent a camera crew to Comrie’s apartment.