Police arrest Black man over sagging pants then kill him in jail
The final moments of Ervin Leon Edwards’ life were spent facedown on the floor of the West Baton Rouge Parish Jail.
Dragged into an isolation cell and surrounded by about half a dozen law enforcement officers, Edwards sometimes struggled with them. At other times, he appears to be lying still, according to recently obtained video footage of the incident.
At one point, while Edwards apparently resisted attempts by officers to restrain him, a Port Allen police officer shocked Edwards with a stun gun. Not long afterward, the inmate quit moving, the footage shows.
The officers then slowly backed away from him and exited the cell. Except for a few peeks through a window of the cell’s door, about 10 minutes go by on the video before deputies and officers returned to the cell to check on him. Edwards, lying still on his stomach, doesn’t appear to move at all during that time frame.
For corrections and use of force experts who reviewed the video footage, that 10-minute gap without checking on Edwards looks like a critical error.
“The fact that the subject appeared unresponsive, perhaps unconscious on the floor as the officers withdrew from the cell, should have resulted in an immediate request for medical intervention and a quick determination of whether there was a pulse or breathing,” said Greg Meyer, who retired several years ago as a captain with the Los Angeles Police Department and is recognized nationally as a use of force expert. “If not, CPR should have been started immediately.”
According to a wrongful death lawsuit filed in federal court in February 2014 on behalf of Edwards’ only son, Ervin Edwards was with his girlfriend at a gas station near Port Allen on Nov. 26, 2013, when the couple got into a “minor argument.”
By the time West Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputies responded, the argument was over, the lawsuit says.
Nevertheless, deputies began to question Edwards about his “sagging” pants, the suit says, and before long Edwards was being arrested.
As a tactic of civil disobedience to compel justice, active nonviolent resistance works only if the oppressor has a conscience. Accordingly, the suffering of the oppressed eventually weighs so heavily upon the conscience of the oppressor that it breaks their will. Then we win.
However, these oppressors appear to be devoid of conscience.
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Police arrest Black man over sagging pants then kill him in jail (Original post)
mercuryblues (11,886 posts) 
