This might explain Live PD:
"I canāt breathe," "save me," the unarmed black man pleads during a traffic stop.
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Body cams show police killing Javier Ambler while filming an A&E television show
āI canāt breathe,ā āsave me,ā the unarmed black man pleads during a traffic stop.
A protester wears a face mask printed with the words āStop killing black peopleā during a march in Brooklyn, New York, on June 7.
Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images
A disturbing new video released Monday by the Austin Police Department shows Javier Ambler pleading for his life as officers restrained him in Austin, Texas. This comes as massive protests have sprung up around the country in response to police brutality ā and the clip in question raises alarms because Amblerās arrest was being filmed for an A&E police-themed reality television show
Live PD.
Ambler, whose March 2019 death was ruled a homicide, was black, appeared sober, and was unarmed,
according to public records. In the body camera
footage, officers restrain Ambler on his stomach and attempt to handcuff him. As they threaten to tase him, Amblers struggles to breathe and repeats, āI have congestive heart failure,ā and, āI canāt breathe.ā Ambler refers to the officers as āsirā throughout and tells them, āI am not resisting.ā He pleads āsave meā and gasps for air before officers tase him in the back. āIām pretty sure I just broke his finger,ā an officer says, pulling Amblerās arm behind him. After being cuffed, Ambler falls limp.
In the clip, deputies attempt to revive Ambler and call EMS, though he remains unresponsive. The medical examiner later found Ambler died of āforcible restraintā along with congestive heart failure and hypertensive cardiovascular disease, according to documents reviewed by
KVUE-TV.
According to
reporting from the Associated Press, police initially pursued Ambler because he failed to dim his lights on his Honda Pilot and led officers on a 20-minute chase. State
documents from the Texas attorney general say that Ambler āexited the Honda Pilot but did not immediately comply with the Deputyās verbal commands,ā and that during the arrest, ātwo Deputies each deployed their individual tasersā to gain compliance and place Ambler in custody. āOnce in custody, Deputies noticed the driver was unresponsive. Deputies were unable to locate a pulse and began chest compressions until EMS arrived and took over life saving interventions,ā the report reads.
The video and additional information concerning Amblerās death comes now after multiple document requests from
Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV. The Austin American-Statesmanās Tony Plohetski reports the new materials raise concerns among local residents who are concerned about police brutality and āworry that the presence of TV cameras leads deputies to forsake prudent policing for dramatic television.ā
Plohetskiās story also notes āsome 15 months after Amblerās death,ā the Williamson County District Attorneyās civil rights investigation into the incident is still ongoing, and explains that local officials plan to present the case to a grand jury. Citing a report from Williamson County sheriffās department internal affairs, Plohetski reports that āthere is no indicationā that āthe deputies faced any action against them or were forced to take time off because of the incident.ā
The dangers of driving while black persist nationwide
A black man on his stomach, hands pulled behind his back, officers pressing on his head: the video of Javier Ambler bears a striking similarity to the
George Floyd clip that has circulated the globe and sparked worldwide protests. Far from an isolated incident, the video comes the same day as another
clip from New Jersey shows the police killing a black man after a minor traffic incident.
Both killings come after years of high-profile police-related deaths of black motorists.
Philando Castileās death started with a ātraffic stopā;
Sandra Blandās death began with a āfailure to signalā;
Walter Scottās death began with a āfaulty brake lightā;
Samuel DuBoseās death began with a āmissing front license plate.ā Far beyond cases that end fatally, investigations have often shown police interactions with black drivers to be both punitive and frivolous. According to a New York Times
investigation, in Greensboro, North Carolina, police āused their discretion to search black drivers or their cars more than twice as often as white motorists,ā and the police āwere more likely to use force if the driver was black, even when they did not encounter physical resistance.ā
A similar Justice Department
investigationfollowing the death of Mike Brown found that, among motorists in Ferguson, Missouri, āAfrican Americans are more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops even after controlling for non-race based variables.ā
Recent videos, previous cases, and longstanding investigations undergird activistsā concerns that
ādriving while blackā is unnecessarily dangerous. The footage of Amblerās killing fuels the policy debate about defunding the police and imagining new, less violent forms of civil service emergency response for public services, including traffic control.
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