An Arizona man drowned in a reservoir as three police officers watched, refusing to step in and save him.
The victim, identified as 34-year-old Sean Bickings, drowned in Tempe town lake while three unnamed Tempe police officers stood by and watched, one telling Bickings: “I’m not jumping in after you,” Fox 10 Phoenix reported.
Newly published video and a transcript of the incident released on Friday provide insight into the events leading up to Bickings’ drowning.
On May 28 at about 5am police responded to an alleged argument between Bickings and a woman.
The woman, who identifies herself as Bickings’ wife in the video, says that the two sometimes have disagreements, but that Bickings did not get physically violent.
Two officers then approach Bickings, who was sitting on a bench near a bridge, with a third officer standing nearby. Officers chat with Bickings for a few minutes, asking him where he lives, if he is a fan of the band AC/DC because of the T-shirt he is wearing and other questions.
At about 5:12am, Bickings climbed over a short metal fence between the boardwalk and the water. As Bickings walked toward the water, he asked if he was free to go, to which officers replied: “You can’t swim in the lake, man.”
Bickings entered the water and began to swim further into the lake. As Bickings swam away, one officer asked another: “How far do you think he’s going to be able to swim?”
Shortly after, Bickings began to tell the officers that he was drowning.
“I’m going to drown. I’m going to drown,” Bickings said.
“No, you’re not,” one of the officers replied.
When Bickings told officers for a second time that he was drowning and was not able to swim back to the bridge, a different officer replied: “OK, I’m not jumping in after you.”
As Bickings was drowning, Bickings’ partner became increasingly distressed, begging officers to save her husband. At one point, an officer tells Bickings’ partner to get off the bridge and threatens to put her in a police car.
“If you don’t calm down, I’m going to put you in my car,” the officer said.
Bickings’ partner continues pressing the officers to jump in and rescue Bickings, with officers replying that a boat is on the way.
“No, no, no,” Bickings’ partner said. “Fuckin’ swim.”
“You’re not helping,” said the officer who threatened to detain her.
The same officer repeatedly tells Bickings’ partner to “stop talking” and later shushes her as she watches Bickings drown.
“I’m just distraught because he’s drowning right in front of you and you won’t help,” Bickings’ partner said.
A different officer notes that Bickings had not come up from underneath the water for 30 seconds.
“He’s everything I got,” Bickings’ partner said. “I can’t lose him, he’s going to die.”
Bickings was later pulled from the water about 11:30am. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The three officers have been placed on non-disciplinary paid administrative leave, which is “customary” in cases involving officer interactions involving deaths, a statement said.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS