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.
It doesn’t matter either way because if they’ve got their knee on the neck of an innocent person, it’s not safe to shoot at them. Hopefully that doesn’t spoil anyone’s virtue signalling, macho fantasy because that’s a tragedy far deeper than the torture, abuse and summary execution of innocent people.
But if I can’t fantasize about murder how am I supposed to feel good on the internet?