Revealed: officers appear to hold Michael Kenyon, 30, to hot pavement in July, causing third-degree burns

On 6 July 2024, a day when temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona, reached 114F (45.5C), Michael Kenyon was walking to his local store to buy a soda when two officers of the city’s police department stopped him.

They hastily told him he was being detained, Kenyon recalls, without clearly stating why. Two more officers arrived.

Surveillance footage from across the parking lot, which was viewed by the Guardian, shows the 30-year-old on the pavement soon after, with several officers on top of him and holding him down. Once they lift Kenyon off the ground after roughly four minutes, he appears limp.

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Those picture are ghastly. Even his “healed” pictures show how much damage they did to him.

    Man, our country is fucked.

  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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    13 hours ago

    “I don’t really want to look at my body any more,” he said, noting it was too painful to see photos from the hospital. “Every time I see myself, I have flashbacks. And every time I see cops, I think, is he after me? And I know in my head it’s not true, but it just comes up.” He said he questions whether he could’ve done something differently. “I have to keep telling myself … I didn’t deserve this.”
    He added: “I just want the Department of Justice to take care of them and fix what they say they’re going to fix … I’m not trying to get attention, I just want my story to be heard because I hurt.”

    Oof.

    • billwashere@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Man I feel for this guy. This is straight up PTSD. This kind of treatment should be considered criminal regardless of what he’d done.

  • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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    23 hours ago

    It really should be legal to fire upon police actively engaging in torture/attempted murder.

    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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      21 hours ago

      That’s a pipe dream. The first few people to try saving some innocent victim of police brutality will be dragged through the mud in the media and the whole ordeal would likely result in more legal protections for police and less rights for police the rest of us.

      • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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        23 hours ago

        I didn’t say it would happen. Just that’s what it should be. These fucking pigs are out of control.

          • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
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            1 hour ago

            Bruh, you’re an angry looney tune making wild assumptions, as if I don’t do anything. Username checks out, I guess.

            • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              There’s a long history of protest against police brutality, all over the world. How many have you been involved with? I’m tired of social media being full of lazy fucks who see shit like this and just say “damn that sucks” and go back to doing fucking nothing or pro-gun fuckstains claiming “Somebody should shoot them. Not me of course, somebody more expendable”.

              • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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                3 hours ago

                You’re on social media, of course your feed is going to be flooded with chronic social media users. This is like going to the beach and complaining that there’s sand.

    • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      There are people who fired on police breaking into their home and won on sale defense.

    • BrotherL0v3@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Sucks that “firing” is what we’re trying to get, when it should be “life changing legal consequences”.

  • Drusas@fedia.io
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    23 hours ago

    Oh my god, those pictures. That poor man.

    I hope he gets millions from his lawsuit and those cops spend years in prison (the first might actually happen, and I can at least hope for the second).