Month: May 2021

In April 2019, police strangled 33-year-old mentally ill African-American man Jean Samuel Celestin to death. Police responded to a call about a domestic dispute after his mother and sister had a little confrontation with him. A few minutes later, the man died without any medical assistance from the officers who choked him.

On April 11, 2019, the Ocoee Police Department received a report of a domestic dispute. Police arrived at the scene and began questioning the man’s relatives about what had happened. Bodycam video shows police talking to Celestina’s mother, who claims that the man punched her in the face. Woman warned a police officer that her son is suffering from mental health problems.

However, Celestin was too disoriented to follow the officers commands, and eventually panicked and ran away. The police caught up with him and tased him, then knocked him to the ground and used a chokehold. A few minutes later, Celestin died of positional asphyxia. The officers did not give the man emergency treatment, despite the fact that they are required to do so after applying a chokehold.

In April 2021, Celesten’s family filed a lawsuit against the city and the police department. The lawsuit seeks compensation and damages, as well as a jury trial against the officers involved in the man’s death.

In August 2016, police officers from Telford, UK, tased black soccer player Dalian Atkinson three times, causing the man’s heart to stop.

On August 15, 2016, the Telford police Department, United Kingdom, received a report that a man was threatening to kill his own father. According to his brother, Atkinson lost control, grabbed his father by the throat and said that he would kill him, then tore the dialysis tube from his shoulder. The police officers who arrived at the scene tried to calm the man down, but after he refused to obey the orders of the police, they decided to use a stun gun against him. The police tased him twice, but it seemed to them that this was not enough for him, and they used the stun gun a third time. This decision cost Atkinson his life. His heart stopped beating. The man was taken to the hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.

As of May 2021, the Atkinson family is still seeking justice. The family’s lawyer claims that the officer pulled the trigger of the taser for 33 seconds, exceeding protocol by five seconds, and then hit him on the head.

On January 5, 2021, Alexander Gonzales, a 27-year-old Hispanic man, was returning home. At this time, an employee of the Austin, Texas police department stopped Gonzales’ car, as it seemed to him that the man had deliberately cut a police car and threatened the officer with a pistol. A police officer called for reinforcements and fired a warning shot into the air, and after reinforcements arrived a few minutes later, Gonzales – probably disoriented from the shot – did not listen to their commands and instead walked to the rear passenger door of his car. The police officer on duty opened fire on him, firing several bullets at Gonzales, killing him on the spot. As it turned out later, the man’s two-month-old baby was in the back passenger seat. Gonzales wanted to see if the officer had hit the baby.

The police admitted that Gonzalez was not in possession of a weapon. They claim to have found in the man’s car “what they think is his pistol.” In April 2021, the Gonzales family hired a lawyer and plans to seek justice in court.

On January 13, 2021, police from Wilmington, Delaware found Moses asleep in his own car. According to the police, after they woke up the man, he entered into a verbal confrontation with them. The policeman repeatedly asked Moses to get out of the car, although he had no reason to do so. Video footage of the policeman’s body camera shows Moses disobeying the officer’s orders and driving away. After a short chase, the police drove Moses’ car into a dead end. He turned his car around and drove in the direction of the officers. He did not try to run over them, but the police decided that they were “in imminent danger” and shot the man. They shot him over nine times.

The officers involved in the shooting were sent on administrative leave. In late April 2021, the Moses family filed a lawsuit against the Wilmington Police Department, accusing them of violating Moses’ constitutional rights, which, according to the lawsuit, led to his death.

In 2018, police from Catford, a south London suburb, came to the aid of 35-year-old Kevin Clarke, who suffers from schizophrenia, but he passed out several hours later and died in hospital.

On March 9, 2018, police found 35-year-old black Kevin Clarke lying on a school playing field. The man suffered from schizophrenia, and when his illness worsened, he lost control of himself. The police decided to arrest Clarke, but he resisted, although he did not realize it. The officers threw him to the ground and then handcuffed him. They pinned him to the ground, and he told them several times that he could not breathe and was not feeling well. A few minutes later, the man lost consciousness. He was taken to a local hospital, where Clark died a few hours later.

Clarke’s cause of death was listed as “acute behavioral disorder with recurrent schizophrenia leading to malnutrition and cardiac arrest,” but his family disagreed, and in January 2021, a lawsuit was filed against the police officer involved in the arrest.

In March 2020, police from Jefferson Parish County, Louisiana shot 14-year-old Tremoll McGee in the back after being knocked to the ground by an officer.

Police said the officers were chasing a car that was reportedly stolen. McGee was in the passenger seat. The teenagers did not know that the car was stolen. After the officers stopped the car, the teenagers scattered in different directions. One of the cops caught up with McGee and knocked him to the ground. The officer hit the young man several times, after which he threatened that if he did not say where his partners ran, he would shoot him. Seconds later, the cop pulled the trigger, shooting McGee in the back. The teenager survived, but was taken to hospital in serious condition. The initial police report only mentions the pursuit of the stolen car and the search for the teenagers seen in it. It does not mention shooting or the use of force.

Despite the fact that the boy survived, he still had fragments of a police bullet in his hand. His mother still wants the sheriff’s office to be held accountable for harming her boy. In March 2021, the McGee family filed a lawsuit against the Jefferson County Police Department, accusing the police of using excessive force against an unarmed 14-year-old.