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.

    • @[email protected]
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      25 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        4725 days ago

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

        • @PoliticalAgitator
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          23 days ago

          Get them under control then. I’m sick of the fucking “thoughts and prayers” generation.

          • @[email protected]
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            924 days ago

            We definitely need better ways of dealing with cops when they are the bad guys. Maybe some sort of police police.

            • @[email protected]
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              224 days ago

              Maybe we should have a guaranteed right to bear arms.

              Incidentally, the police police are the FBI.

            • @PoliticalAgitator
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              -1424 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”.

              • @[email protected]
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                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
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                  -1124 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
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                824 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.

                • @PoliticalAgitator
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                  -1424 days ago

                  Luckily, they have you to leap to their defense when someone tells them to act on their concerns.

                  • @Feathercrown
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                    624 days ago

                    Actually you’re mostly ranting about an imagined enemy, not giving practical advice about making meaningful change.

            • @PoliticalAgitator
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              -223 days ago

              Yeah that’s what I said but it’s unpopular when it’s about something that matters.

          • @[email protected]
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            223 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
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              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.

            • @PoliticalAgitator
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              -724 days ago

              Oh you’ve been shooting at cops have you? Following through on your super cool solution?

      • @[email protected]
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        223 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.

    • @Snowclone
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      1725 days ago

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

        • @[email protected]
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          123 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
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      23 days ago

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

      Damn autocorrect

    • @BrotherL0v3
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      425 days ago

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

      • Ech
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        3225 days ago

        They aren’t talking about firing them from a job.

        • @BrotherL0v3
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          1925 days ago

          Oh shit! Reading comprehension is my passion.

          Yeah, that’s much more based.