Ahmaud Arbery
Updating to add: the two white men have been arrested.
Then there’s the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.
Georgia prosecutor has called for a grand jury investigation into the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was killed after being chased by two white men in February while out running in a residential neighborhood outside Brunswick, a city on the state’s southeast coast.
It’s unclear why those two white men have not been arrested to this point, unless it’s just as simple as “Well they are white men you see.”
Advocates have likewise expressed alarm over the way the shooting has been handled by police, and the lack of criminal charges thus far brought against his attackers. Anger erupted after a disturbing video emerged Tuesday on social media, appearing to show the violent, and seemingly unprovoked, circumstances surrounding Arbery’s death.
I haven’t watched the video. Can’t do it.
The police have had the video since February 23, the day of the murder, and have kept it to themselves.
Video footage captured by an unidentified witness in a vehicle being driven behind Arbery shows him as he jogs along a two-lane road on Feb. 23. Ahead, a white pickup truck is parked, with one man standing in the truck bed and another standing by the driver’s side.
Arbery is seen running toward the truck’s right side and he then veers in and out of the camera’s frame. A gunshot rings out. Arbery is then seen entering into a struggle with one man, who appears to hold a long gun. Another shot then rings out; Arbery was shot at least twice before he fell to the pavement.
An incident report from the Glynn County Police Department obtained by the New York Times identifies Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, as two men who pursued Arbery, though they are not immediately identifiable in the video footage. The report includes a series of quotes from Gregory McMichael, who is identified as a witness.
And this is where the ears start to ring from sheer rage.
Gregory McMichael said he saw Arbery run by his front yard and alerted his son, according to the police report — he says they thought he resembled a suspect behind recent break-ins in the neighborhood. Both men then grabbed weapons and attempted to follow Arbery in their pickup truck.
STOP RIGHT THERE.
What.the.fuck.
People don’t get to grab their guns and go out to chase down people they “think” looks like somebody they “think” has been behind some local break-ins. End of story. This isn’t a movie from the 50s, this isn’t a tv show, this isn’t the OK Corral; random people are not deputized to chase people down and shoot them.
After a chase, the men pulled up beside Arbery and shouted at him to stop, McMichael claimed, and Travis McMichael got out of the vehicle with a shotgun. Gregory McMichael alleged that Arbery then attacked Travis and that the men began fighting over the weapon before any shots were fired— an assertion which appears to contradict the footage appearing to show Arbery only began grappling with a man after the first shot.
What the hell were they doing pulling up beside him (while carrying great big guns) and shouting at him to stop??? They’re not his bosses and they’re not the cops. We don’t need vigilante policing thank you very much.
According to a New York Times report, one of the prosecutors, George E. Barnhill, who had formerly been assigned to examine the case told police the men who chased Arbery were acting in accordance with Georgia’s self-defense and citizen arrest statutes.
So amateur policing is legal in Georgia? That’s insane. Stark raving mad.
Andrea Young, the executive director for the A.C.L.U. of Georgia, noted similarities between the circumstances of Arbery’s killing and the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin.
“The vigilante behavior that we saw in Brunswick is unacceptable in a civilized society,” Young said in a statement. “Ahmaud was killed three days before the anniversary of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin. Both incidents are a reminder that white supremacy has been a foundation for our country and leads repeatedly to the targeting and harming people of color, particularly African Americans.”
Indeed. It’s horrendous.
In Georgia, a citizen’s arrest can only be made by a person who is personally witnessing a misdemeanor of felony being committed, and only allowed to detain them, i.e. keep them from fleeing the scene (but not by using deadly force, although that does prevent them from leaving (forever in this case)). Since Arbery was not committing a crime, there is no provision for a citizen’s arrest, or a police arrest for that matter unless they had a warrant.
Also in Georgia, the McMicheals will likely get murder charges (eventually?), this is clearly not voluntary manslaughter.
Anyway, why these two are not in jail already is beyond belief, and there is a lot wrong with how this is being handled. If the skin colors were reversed, it would be a whole different story, the shooters would be immediately hunted down, most likely subjected to police brutality, never see the outside of a jail again, and probably be on death row in a month. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, there is definitely racial bias, not just in the crime itself, but also in how the justice system is handling it. Absolutely sickening.
Update, just saw on CNN.com these bastards have been arrested. About fucking time. I’m not a fan of the death penalty, but there’s a good argument for it here.
Yes, I just saw the breaking news too.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/mother-unarmed-black-man-killed-georgia-speaks-ahmaud/
You’ve probably read it all now, but the older McMicheals was a retired police officer and until recently had been working for the DA as an investigator. It was the DA who employed him who initially said ‘nothing to see here’. It wasn’t until pressure built to investigate further that the decision was made to get a Grand Jury involved and the initial DA recused themselves as too involved with the suspect to do so. All just so blatantly corrupt and racist.
It would be interesting to know what popular opinion is on this, on a state-by-state basis across the US. This case also carries within it its own recommendation: never go out jogging unarmed.
Looks to me like the Civil War never ended.`
Sounds like the advice they give women. You take the responsibility. It is a sign of the sickness of our society.
But here’s a hypothetical for you. Arbery was armed, let’s say. He shot his attackers in self-defense. What happens? Not even a difficult call. Black man shoots white man…we know what would happen.
Still, I understand the urge to give that advice, because to do otherwise opens you up murder (for jogging black men) or rape (for unarmed women wearing perfectly ordinary clothes that might happen to show a bit of skin, or wearing a nun’s habit, or walking nude, or dressed from head to foot in a Burqa).
The system need to be…I was about to say fixed, but I think it is more dire than that. It needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, this time around humane values and standards that recognize all people as people, not just white males who managed to be born rich enough that people assume they are more worthy than the rest of us (no matter how orange they might be).