The Greensboro Police Department released bodycam footage of the last moments of Anton Black’s life Friday.
Officers arrived on the scene in Greensboro, Maryland, on September 15 after someone called 911 to report a suspected kidnapping, according to The Baltimore Sun.
Police found Black outside with a 12-year-old family member; the child wasn’t in danger, according to his relatives. When officer Thomas Webster IV approached the 19-year-old and ordered him to put his hands behind his back, he ran.
Black had schizophrenia according to Webster. Webster and the other responding officers caught up to Black when he ducked into a relative’s car parked outside of his mother’s home. Webster smashed a window with his baton and tased Black, but the electric jolt didn’t seem to work.
Webster and two other officers eventually subdued the teenager with the help of an onlooker. Jennell Black, Anton's mother, stepped outside and witnessed her son struggling with the officers.
She yelled his name and urged him to calm down. Anton shouted back that he loved her. Jennell can be heard attempting to explain her son's condition to one of the officers.
“I had him evaluated, and he got let go last week,” she said.
“It’s not good. They won’t hold them. He needs help,” an officer replied.
As the police began to shackle Anton, his mother noticed his body was limp. She asked the officers if he could breathe. They discovered the 19-year-old wasn't breathing and called an ambulance to the scene. The responders gave him Narcan, a drug used to stop the effects of an opioid overdose, as an officer can be heard wondering aloud if the teen was on drugs. He was eventually unshackled.
Jennell eventually approached to ask if her son was breathing again. Someone responded, “Not yet.”
At that point, Webster put in a call to his superiors.
“We get him into custody, and he goes out,” he said. “It turned into a real show.”
Anton was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
After an autopsy, the medical examiner attributed the 19-year-old's death to “sudden cardiac death” from an undetected heart condition and mental illness, according to WJZ13. The official also believed the violence of Anton's arrest might have contributed, as well. However, the death was ruled an accident.
The police department refused to release the tape until Governor Larry Hogan (R) intervened. The tape was given to the media and examined by an expert.
“My opinion right now just based on the information that I’ve seen was an appropriate level of force and the legal standard is reasonable,” the expert declared.
The family disagrees.
“There was no good reason for these officers to inflict this degree of force on Anton Black, or even to arrest him,” they said in a statement. “There was no reason to tase him. There was no reason for the officer to tackle him, restrain him and shackle him. There was no reason to inflict 43 blunt trauma wounds on Anton Black. There was no reason for Anton Black to die.”
Timothy F. Maloney, one of the family's attorneys, wants the Department of Justice to investigate the case. Caroline County State’s Attorney Joseph Riley doesn’t believe there’s enough evidence and doesn't plan to file any charges against the officers involved.
“I have an ethical obligation to only put cases in front of the grand jury that I believe are supported by probable cause,” Riley said. “It would be unethical of me to put a case in front of the grand jury without probable cause, believing that they would not return [an] indictment simply to remove pressure on myself or this office.”
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