Revealed: officers appear to hold Michael Kenyon, 30, to hot pavement and give him third-degree burns in July footage

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.

    • @CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
      62•24 days 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.

            • @PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
              -14•24 days 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”.

              • @TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                13•24 days ago

                Dude, you don’t know any of these people or what they do IRL. To go off like this for no reason is just some insane people stuff. Get some help, and get off social media if it makes you so upset that you create little stories in your mind of what people do or don’t do with their lives.

                • @PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
                  -11•24 days ago

                  Sure I do, because he has the solution of a fucking idiot: “We should be able to shoot at cops with our cool guns”.

                  Maybe you should try getting more upset? If you’re going to do nothing of consequence, you could at least do it with some passion. Even on an anonymous platform with no consequences, all you’re bringing to the table is “touch grass” tone policing.

              • @Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
                8•24 days 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.

          • @Krauerking@lemy.lol
            2•23 days ago

            Your solution is

            “Just fix it”

            Which puts a lot of just making it someone else’s problem with no plan of your own.

            No situation has been fixed without making so much noise or issues that it becomes another person’s problem with power. If the solution was just people going out and fixing it then the world would be very different than it is now.

            But it sure is easy to just be stepped back and making a claim for other people to figure out.

            • @PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
              1•23 days ago

              I’ve been an active part of two movements that saw police prosecuted and systemic changes implemented which also included being assaulted by police and requiring medical attention. I’m 100% comfortable with the contributions I’ve made. Every piece of progress and justice I’ve been a part of has involved (as you say), “making it a problem for people with power”, not spouting pseudo-macho bullshit about other people shooting police.

              I’ve fought for causes like this for almost 40 years and I’ve never seen people so fucking toothless. Forget actually acting on anything, they don’t even make art art about it. They just regurgitate corporate talking points about guns and sulk on the internet if someone disagrees. They promote other people dying in a hail of bullets or spending the rest of their life in prison and they won’t even send an email.

              But it sure is easy to just be stepped back and making a claim for other people to figure out.

              A criticism you’re clearly not interested in applying evenly to the people in this thread.

      • @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        2•23 days ago

        Well they’d be summarily executed by other officers, at the scene.

        Their name might get dragged through the mud afterwards, but they’d already be dead, for certain.

        • @octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1•23 days ago

          Even Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend got acquitted after doing so. It does happen. Though I agree with you that it’s likely a death sentence to defend yourself from police, no matter how justified.

    • @Jumi@lemmy.world
      6•23 days ago

      Isn’t that like the reason you have such lax fun gun laws over there?

      Damn autocorrect