06/06/2020 - 11:14
- Clarín.com
- World
In the last hours, another brutal video that surprises and moves the world came out. In the images, the fierce aggression to which Manuel Ellis (33), another African-American murdered in the United States, in this case by police from Tacoma, in Washington state, was exposed.
According to The New York Times, the filming was done by a woman who was behind the police car at the time of the arrest and witnessed the violent beating. In the video she is heard screaming, "Stop hitting him! My God! Stop it!"
The recording, released by the Tacoma Action Collective, was recently released by the witness, who according to the victim's family lawyer, James Bible, had not realized that the man had died that night. "Respiratory arrest, hypoxia and physical restriction," they explained from the medical examiner's office.
Like George Floyd in Minneapolis, who was also killed by a police officer, Ellis said during the violent arrest, "I can't breathe." Those were his last words because, then he vanished and the minute the paramedics arrived, he stopped breathing, according to the News Tribune.
The episode occurred on March 3 on the streets of Tacoma. The victim was suddenly thrown to the ground by the agents, who after reducing him, handcuffed, beat and mistreated him. According to the police, it was Ellis who attacked the troops.
"The lives of blacks matter", the slogan that is imposed after the crimes of Goerge Floyd and Manuel Ellis. REUTERS / Lindsey Wasson
Although the video only shows two officers arresting Ellis, the Tacoma Police Department identified four officers involved in the violent arrest. Two of them are white, one is black and the other is Asian, the press confirmed.
The mayor of that city, Victoria Woodards, condemned the events, confirmed that Ellis's death was a homicide and assured that she is going to ask that the four officers who committed the crime be dismissed and "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." In addition, she also required the Pierce County Sheriff to provide details on the actions of each officer present at the scene, and instructed the city mayor to allocate funds to place body cameras on officers.
"As an African American woman, I didn't need a video to believe, but as I watched it I was furious, angry and disappointed even more. I can't take off this skin color every day, I can't go out as a different person. As long as I'm mayor, I'm still being black. They still treat me like an African American woman, "Woodards bellowed.
Meanwhile, in the context of the pandemic and for the tenth consecutive night in many American cities, thousands of people took to the streets to protest on behalf of George Floyd against racism and police violence. Logically, the concern about a possible increase in coronavirus infections favored by the ongoing protests.
There are now 1.9 million cases of Covid-19 in the entire United States and 109 thousand victims, according to data from this Saturday the Johns Hopkins University. But the most alarming figure, according to The New York Times based on its database, "is that we still travel at an average of more than 20,000 new cases per day: 21,614 on Thursday, especially in the south of the country and in part of the west coast country characterized by new outbreaks. "