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.

  • billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    6 days 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.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
      10·
      5 days ago

      Kenyon has not been charged with a crime and a police spokesperson confirmed he was not the suspect that officers were seeking as part of a theft investigation.

      Hadn’t done anything.

      • IamSparticles@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        Reminder that this is the Phoenix police. The same folks that assaulted and arrested an innocent deaf black man who has cerebral palsy because he didn’t immediately respond when they yelled at him to stop.