Comedian Dave Chappelle says he was choked by the police in New Orleans

The comedy show featuring Dave Chappelle at the Saenger Theater was uncomfortably topical. One of the two opening acts was Hannibal Buress, who told the audience he's been living in New Orleans for several weeks now. Why? Hiding out from Bill Cosby, he said.

Burress, who is in New Orleans filming the movie "Daddy's Home," called Cosby a rapist in a Oct. 17 performance in Cosby's hometown of Philadelphia, and after he did, all hell broke loose. The numerous allegations against Cosby were out there before Buress mentioned them. Indeed, he was only able to mention those allegations because they were out there. But when he said without equivocation that Cosby's a rapist, the public paid more attention than it ever had before.

Since October, multiple women have stepped forward to say that "America's Dad," as Cosby was once known, had either drugged them, raped them or both. On Thursday, the same day Buress joked that he was in New Orleans to hide out from Cosby, Vanity Fair published a first-person account by model Beverly Johnson who says Cosby slipped a drug into a coffee drink he gave her.

It wasn't so surprising that Buress mentioned Cosby in his routine. Given what has happened since October, the audience might have expected that.

But it's doubtful that the audience was expecting Chappelle, while talking about theJuly choking death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, to reveal that he, too, has been choked by a police officer.

In New Orleans no less.

Chappelle said he was working on his "first movie" here in New Orleans. He was playing a mugger, he said. He was dressed for the part. The movie set was surrounded with police tape. He ducked under it. Then a police officer set upon him and immediately started choking him.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Dave Chappelle played a mugger in the 1993 movie "Undercover Blues," part of which was filmed in New Orleans. The movie was shot in the summer of 1992. Filming ended the same month Chappelle celebrated his 19th birthday.

One of the women working on the set saw what was happening to the actor and yelled to the police officer that he belonged on the set. After relaxing his hold on Chappelle's neck the police officer said, according to the comedian, "Well why didn't he say something?"

The weirdest thing about being a black man being choked by the police, Chappelle said, is that you don't even wonder why it's happening. You just think, he said, "OK, here we go."*

*(Please note: Chappelle had strict rules that nobody in the Saenger audience was to pull out a mobile phone for any reason: pictures, texting, Facebook, etc. So I've recounted what he said from memory. I didn't take notes. A colleague who was also at the show is certain that Chappelle said, "OK, here we go" when he was being choked and not "OK, here it is" as I originally said. Whichever it is, Chappelle made it clear that when he was being choked, he was not surprised but was, instead, resigned to the fact that he was being choked.)

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