Body camera footage The Guardian newspaper obtained shows Georgia police officers making Ahmaud Arbery jump through hoop after figurative hoop years before he was hunted down, shot, and killed in an encounter allegedly orchestrated by another former cop. Glynn County police officer Michael Kanago admitted in a police incident report the newspaper obtained to pulling Arbery over Nov. 7, 2017 for doing nothing more than sitting in a parked car in Townsend Park, an area “known for drugs and other criminal activity.”
When Kanago approached the car Arbery was sitting in, Arbery "immediately exited the vehicle," the officer said. "In my experience as a sworn police officer, immediately exiting a vehicle can be associated with running on foot, violent engagement, and intoxication," Kanago said in the report.
He asked Arbery what he was doing in the park, and Arbery explained that he was relaxing and rapping in his car. Arbery also gave the officer his driver’s license when asked for identification. He told the officer at one point in the encounter that no one was even driving the car. "What the f--k you comin' over here for," he asked. The officer told Arbery he was "conducting an investigation."
"He raised his voice and approached me; I observed veins popping from his chest which made me feel that he was becoming enraged and may turn physically violent toward me," the cop said. "Therefore, I requested another unit and ordered Arbery to place his hands on his vehicle so I could conduct a patdown for weapons."
After failing to find any weapon on Arbery, Kanago approached Arbery's car, according to the report. "Don't go into my motherf----n' car!," Arbery said, according to the officer. Soon after, a second officer arrived on the scene, and Kanago claimed he observed a plastic baggie in the center console of Arbery's car. "You can't touch my s--t," Arbery reportedly said, walking toward his vehicle. The second officer to arrive, David Haney, noticed Arbery, earlier said to be wearing a winter coat, sliding his hands into his pockets, so the officer stopped Arbery and pulled out his Taser, according to the report.
He ordered Arbery to take his hands out of his pockets. And although the report doesn't specify whether Arbery complied with that command, Haney tried to use the Taser against Arbery, but it malfunctioned. "We ordered Arbery to get on the ground and he got down on his knees," Kanago said in the report.
He tried one more time to search Arbery's car. But when Arbery didn't give consent, the officer told Arbery he was free to go but couldn't drive because of a suspended license, Kanago said in the report.
"After Arbery left the scene, I noticed that his driver-side window was slightly opened," Kanago said. "I placed my nose near the opening of the vehicle and smelled the odor of what I believed to be burned marijuana and observed a plastic baggie in the center console with some sort of leafy substance inside."
Just over two years later, Arbery again came face to face with two more white people accusing him of criminal activity: Gregory McMichael and his son Travis. This time the encounter led to the Black jogger's death.
Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill, the second of four prosecutors once assigned to the homicide case, recused himself several weeks after learning both Gregory McMichael and Barnhill’s son, a prosecutor in the Brunswick district attorney’s office, had worked together on Arbery’s prosecution.
Arbery was convicted in high school of carrying a weapon on campus and obstructing a law enforcement officer, according to court documents The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained. He was later convicted of violating his probation by shoplifting in 2018, the newspaper reported.
When Arbery was killed, Barnhill wrote Glynn County police that criminal charges against Travis McMichael, who allegedly fired the deadly shots at Arbery, weren’t justified. The prosecutor also wrote in his recusal letter that the Arbery family “are not strangers to the local criminal justice system,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“From best we can tell, Ahmauds [sic] older brother has gone to prison in the past and is currently in the Glynn jail, without bond, awaiting new felony prosecution,” Barnhill added. “It also appears a cousin has been prosecuted by DA Johnson's office.”
Barnhill also called out “a local 'rabble rouser'” who he said “has taken up this cause and begun publishing wild and factually incorrect and legally wrong accusations on Facebook and other social media formats calling for marches and physical affronts be made against the McMichaels at their homes, and my son's home in Brunswick etc.”
He hasn’t, however, been as quick to call out the men actually accused of murdering Arbery.
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