A video has emerged of a 2017 incident that depicts Glynn County police stopping and attempting to use a Taser on Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old man killed while jogging in Georgia earlier this spring.
The clip adds to the blowback law enforcement in the area has received for the delay in arresting Gregory and Travis McMichael, the two white men who have been charged with chasing down and killing Arbery.
According to video and records obtained by the Guardian, an officer confronted Arbery in November 2017 at a park for sitting alone in his car in an area known for drug trafficking.
Arbery said he didn’t have drugs and refused to let the officer search his car. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Arbery told the officer he was rapping to hip-hop beats in his car and had the day off from work at Blue Beacon Truck Wash.
“You bothered me for nothing,” Arbery told officers on the body camera footage. “I'm trying to chill on my day off."
The initial officer at the scene, Michael Kanago, said he felt threatened by Arbery and later wrote in his official report that “veins were popping from [Arbery’s] chest, which made me feel that he was becoming enraged and may turn physically violent,” per the Guardian.
Then, Kanago requested backup from the department. When officer David Haney came to support him, Haney appeared more agitated than Kanago. Without asking if Kanago had checked Arbery for a weapon, Haney yelled at Arbery to get his hands out of his pockets, and Arbery complied.
Haney then tried to tase Arbery, but his weapon malfunctioned, according to the police report. Arbery continued to comply with instructions from the two officers to get on the ground but kept asking why he was being singled out.
“I get one day off a week,” Arbery said. “I’m up early in the morning trying to chill. I’m just so aggravated because I work hard, six days a week.”
Eventually, the police allowed Arbery to leave but did not let him drive off in his car because his driver’s license was suspended at the time, per the Guardian.
Lawyers working for the Arbery family said this effort was harassment and “appears to be just a glimpse into the kind of scrutiny Arbery faced not only by this police department, but ultimately regular citizens like the McMichaels.”
The Glynn County Police Department has been mired in controversy over the last few years. According to the Guardian, the department was forced to disband a narcotics department in 2019 after an investigator was found to have had sexual relations with two confidential informants. This March, the department’s police chief and three other officers were indicted for perjury related to allegations they overlooked evidence that an officer had an inappropriate relationship with a drug dealer.
