Commenting on the death of the victim, Keenan Anderson, after he was repeatedly tasered by police officers in Los Angeles, a development that has sparked a massive outcry throughout the United States, Kan’ani in a tweet on Tuesday described Anderson’s death as a “tragic.”
Anderson, 31, cousin of Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, died at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, after suffering a cardiac arrest following the incident on the afternoon of January 3 in Los Angeles’ Venice neighborhood.
He reminded that the murder had coincided with the day that marks the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., the legendary American civil rights leader, who dedicated his life to the realization of equal treatment for the United States’ African-American community.
The murder, the spokesman said, indicated that “despite the passage of five decades following Luther King’s murder, his dreams of the Black Americans’ equal entitlement to civil rights…has not been realized.”
“The people of color,” he added, “are still subject to severe violation of basic human rights and racist treatment.”
According to reports, the school teacher was repeatedly tasered by Los Angeles police officers and heavy-handedly restrained following a traffic accident. In a 13-minute body-cam footage released by the Los Angeles Police Department, Anderson was seen begging for help as multiple officers held him to the ground and one officer pressed his elbow along with his body weight onto his neck.
“They’re trying to George Floyd me. They’re trying to George Floyd me,” Anderson could be heard saying in the footage, in reference to the US police’s killing of Floyd in May 2020 in Minneapolis which triggered racial justice protests around the world.
MNA/PR
