Originally posted by Doyle
I disagree. With the fight the man put up, he must have been strong enough that the officers felt putting 2 men on him would not be sufficient to hold him down.
After struggling with the officers, how could they tell the difference between struggling to get free and struggling to breathe.
Did the officers cover his mouth or nostrils? no.. Did they ingest him with drugs? no...
I agree with Nanandjim that if we fight with police officers, we should expect them to protect themselves.
No matter how you look at it, the end result is the man was suffocated. Now, if LE has the right to kill you to subdue you, something is wrong in this country.
LE can be mad as heck, but it does not take 6 or more armed men to hold a man still for handcuffing. Besides, the man was so fat, he couldn't be expected to simply lift his hands behind his back from a face down prone position. Impossible.
When those several cops were on top of that man, it was CLEAR from the video that they were not being jostled in the least, that the man was trying to breathe and was panicked. One of the cops actually told another that he could break the man's neck the way he was applying pressure, and the cop did not respond to the warning or release his hold. This was the cop that was 'assaulted' by the man and I guess he felt he needed to hurt the guy and really show his power, before he could regain his macho image sufficiently. An ego power trip thing, so common with some in LE. The bad apples.
There was no 'danger' from this man to 6 plus armed men. It was a battle of wills is all. The 'danger' was long past. The man was on his stomach, face down, with 6 or more armed men on top of him!
They wanted to make him be perfectly still, as a macho means of humiliating him and showing total control over him. Instead, they killed him by suffocating him.
Now, if that is Ohio justice, Ohio is in for some serious and well deserved riots, IMO. For the first time, I agree with Maxine Waters. No justice, no peace.
No matter what happened minutes prior, that man died from being sat upon by 6 or more men, and from being smothered to death by them.
At the time they were killing him, he repeatedly indicated his stress and they ignored him. It's all on tape. You can watch them calmly kill the man. And then watch them slowly roll him over, and watch them say he has a pulse but is not breathing, watch them roll him over, but do nothing to assist him breathing, watch as the paramedics take their sweet time getting to him, and watch them begin chest compressions, giving him no air.
At least a dozen armed cops at a scene with one 300 pound man, and they end the incident by sitting on him as he struggles for his life and asphyxiate him. Horrible. Then they let him continue to die as he is not breathing, has a bit of pulse left, but they do not do CPR. They killed him. The tape shows it clearly.
Drugs or not. Big or not. Cooperative or not. Fighting or not. When the cops have the situation controlled, and they did, they do not NEED to suffocate a man to handcuff him.
This was murder. In the first degree, as there WAS a warning of danger to the man by one of the cops to a cop putting extreme pressure on him. If one of the cops noticed it himself, why is it so hard for everyone else to see what he did? The cop he cautioned and the others refused to heed the warning and within a minute or two that man was dead, due to them suffocating him and cutting off his air supply. And finally due to them refusing him CPR.
If the man struggled at the end, he was struggling to BREATHE!!!!
The cops were holding him still so they could kill him without him moving a muscle????
Come on, that is so horrific it's pathetic!
If this was a white man, the calls for justice would be deafening.
I can see why the African American feels betrayed in this country when he has to die because LE decides it's a 'danger' to them that he is fighting to BREATHE - fighting for his LIFE!!!
