Brooklyn Bishop Lamor Whitehead cuffed, released two hours later after mid-sermon confrontation with women
Brooklyn Bishop Lamor Whitehead was handcuffed Sunday after a sermon in which he grabbed a woman who he believed was a threat to his family — only to be released by police about two hours later.
“They lock me up in front of my children, in front of my wife, in front of my church,” Whitehead told the Daily News hours after his release. “They publicly embarrassed me and then they drop all the charges after two hours and apologize to me.”
Whitehead was preaching at Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministry on Remsen Ave. near Avenue D in Canarsie on Sunday when two women walked in to the church in the middle of his sermon, he said.
Whitehead — who was robbed at gunpoint during a sermon over the summer — said the women entered “the same way it happened when my church got robbed.”
“I was almost done with my preaching and these two young ladies came in and sat in the back,” he recounted.
“You want to come preach? Come on up here,” Whitehead was heard saying to one of the women, who was off-camera, during a social media livestream of the services. “I’m gonna make you famous.”
Within moments of calling the women out, at least one started screaming, the video shows.
The bishop then moved off camera and walked into the crowd, telling someone to “move her out of here.”
Upon walking back to the front of the church, he spotted one of the women coming toward him, he said.
“She came in the middle aisle and just [started] cussing me out, calling me all types of names, calling me all types of things,” Whitehead said.
“She came back storming toward my wife and my 10-month-old baby,” he continued. “She went toward my wife and that’s when I grabbed her. I grabbed her and took her out of my church. All I could remember was the guys with the guns who put their gun in my baby’s face.”
In the video, Whitehead appears to grab the woman by the back of the neck and pushes her off camera before he yells, “Grab her! Grab her!”
After his sermon, a detective who arrived at the church informed Whitehead he would be arrested and charged with assault.
“They put me in cuffs and I told them I wasn’t getting in and they grabbed me and picked me up and put me in the car,” Whitehead said. “There were a lot of little kids in church that are frightened now — again. All the little babies in my church saw me get arrested, the ones that look up to me.”
Whitehead was taken to the 69th Precinct stationhouse, where police began to process him.
“All I want to do is preach the word of God and I end up in prison,” he said. “They treated me like a criminal.”
Whitehead believes that “higher-ups” in the Police Department caught wind he was in custody.
“They dropped all the charges and let me out,” he said. “You don’t get to arrest me and throw me in prison. They had me in a cell with someone with felony charges and let me out. It’s not going to stop here. If I was a rabbi, if I was a Catholic priest, they would have never done this.”
Whitehead and one of the women were taken into custody, police confirmed, with neither immediately charged.
Whitehead said his ministers recognized the women who had entered the church.
“They were some wannabe up-and-coming bloggers,” he said. “They came to my church to disrupt my service.”
Three armed robbers stormed into the church in July. Police sources said the robbers made off with $1 million worth of Whitehead’s and his wife’s jewelry, but in an exclusive sit-down interview with The News, the bishop said that number was exaggerated and inaccurate.
Whitehead, an ally of Mayor Adams, was in the headlines prior to the robbery.
In May, he tried to orchestrate the surrender of Andrew Abdullah, the man accused of fatally shooting Goldman Sachs researcher Daniel Enriquez on the Q train, to the mayor.
