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.

  • Letstakealook@lemm.ee
    1351·
    2 months ago

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

    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
      631·
      2 months 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
        47·
        2 months ago

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

            • intensely_human@lemm.ee
              31·
              2 months ago

              Maybe we should have a guaranteed right to bear arms.

              Incidentally, the police police are the FBI.

            • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
              216·
              2 months 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”.

              • TopRamenBinLadenEnglish
                13·
                2 months 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
                  213·
                  2 months 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·
                2 months 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·
            2 months 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·
              2 months 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·
        2 months 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@lemmy.world
      181·
      2 months ago

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

        • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          2 months 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
      71·
      2 months ago

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

      Damn autocorrect

    • BrotherL0v3@lemmy.world
      73·
      2 months ago

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

  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    751·
    2 months 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.worldEnglish
      28·
      2 months 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·
        2 months 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·
          2 months 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.

  • Drusas@fedia.io
    59·
    2 months 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).

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
    44·
    2 months ago

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

    Man, our country is fucked.

    • IamSparticles@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      3rd degree burns are serious business. It means the skin is completely destroyed and won’t heal, and potential deep tissue damage all the way to the bone. Treatment typically requires skin grafts taken from other parts of the body.

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      2 months ago

      only one of these problems can be easily and quickly solved by a shotgun slug to the face, though.