Why was it strange? The intent was likely to scare the shit out of him, maybe rough him up. Get the satisfaction of watching him “freeze”.
See, it’s strange to you because you are trying to put yourself in their place, and you would never do that. Don’t think about it that way. Put yourself in Arbery’s place instead. Make this his story.
No I know what I mean by strange. They wanted to humilate him and feel better about their own manhood in the process.
I still think the displaying of guns was an original sin to this crime. Are they going to show up in court and say they wanted to talk to him but used a gun to convince him that it was important?
Pulling a gun on a stranger is a big deal. It makes you the criminal.
This homicide in 2020 has hundreds of years of history behind it. As someone who grew up in the Deep South, I understand the long history behind this, though admittedly from the white and privileged side of things and not on the receiving end.
There is a long history in the South of gangs of white men pursuing black men with guns - first as fugitive slave hunters and then as vigilante lynch mobs. The guns represent power and authority, not just privilege. They represent the place of the white man at the apex of the social order. It’s perhaps less explicit and obvious than it was in 1920, but the gun is still a symbol of white power a hundred years later.
I don’t know if they pursued Arbery with cold blooded murder on the mind, but they didn’t really give him a lot of options. It’s apparent that even though his pursuers were not acting in any official law enforcement capacity, they clearly felt very confident and comfortable deputizing themselves to act in an official capacity to keep the community’s black population under control.
They could have just called the cops and kept their distance - that would have been easiest on everyone. They deliberately chose not to, and they chose not to because as white men, particularly white men who apparently have ties to law enforcement, and who possess guns and have grown up in a culture in which race, class, the color of law, and guns all intersect, they just knew they were within their divine right to carry out the “law” that white men made against what they have for generations regarded as the white man’s natural natural nemesis: the young, free black male.
Maybe, just maybe, the men who killed Aubrey didn’t necessarily set out to kill him, but they sure as hell didn’t necessarily set out to avoid killing him either. There’s no way you take loaded weapons to a physical confrontation without knowing that someone could end up dead. Once they made the decision to pursue Arbery as a team of three and with guns, once they decided to corner him, it became a binary choice for a surprised and presumably scared jogger: he either submits to white power, or he gets shot like a rabid dog and they go home and tell jokes about it over beers and sandwiches.
Submitting might not have helped him. One of the things we are going to hear a lot is that if he had just “froze”, if he had gone submissive, he would have been OK. It will be all “it’s not right and its not fair, but he’d be alive today if he hadn’t put his pride first. He should have accepted that this is the world we live in”. But that’s not true. The first rule of a violent interaction is to not let them lay hands on you, don’t let them get you in the car. Submission might have lead to him being chained to the bumper. It’s happened before.
It happened so fast I don’t sense a lot of deliberation or volition on Arberys part. A man with a rifle is supposed to be far enough away, and have the time, to make verbal demands on someone to keep him away. Otherwise it’s not much use. Arbery went around to avoid the issue. Is it assumed that as soon as he is out of camera he chose to go straight at the rifleman in attack? What did the rifelman do in that instant?
The issue is whether Arbery had to stop on their command. Obviously he didn’t. I hope the autopsy shows something. I wonder if they stopped filming because they were complicit.
And if he did get chained to the bumper, the narrative would be “he should have fought back”.
Ph
I am just reminded that one of the first posts that Darren Garrison posted here was about some black person calling him racist when he clearly wasn’t being. And, at the time, I said that, even if he didn’t think he was being racist, he could have been.
This thread shows what I mean. As did his defense of the Confederate flag, but that at least has some plausible deniability.
As for the OP, it seems that the board ate my post, so I will post again. Apologies that it is a bit behind the current convsersation.
OP: you admit now that you realize this post was racist of you. So what clued you in? And how did you hear about this so that you didn’t know it was racist?
Knowing this would be good in figuring out how to get through to people who let the race of the issue cloud their judgment. Plus it’s a great way to let everyone know your apology is genuine. I trust it is, but people could just think you just were saying what you needed to say to get people to stop attacking you.
At least, in my opinion, hearing how you messed up is part of the apology.
Lynched if you don’t; lynched if you do.
Fine. But I wasn’t writing to defend Arbery, nor to attack his murderers. I was condemning Garrison. If his life really is so very very tame that he’s never done anything suspicious, then his life-experience is too inadequate to offer an opinion on this matter and should STFU.
I had only really watched the main part of the video and I guess I subconsciously assigned ‘police officer’ status to the two armed men and ‘perp’ status to the black man, or something to that effect. What I also failed to consider was how fast the guy intercepted Arbery. Arbery probably feared for his life so he instinctively tried to disarm him, so Arbery was not the one to escalate the situation.
What really dawned on me though is that if the two armed men were in fact fully dressed police officers with a police truck emergency lights on, they could easily get away with murder for the exact same circumstance due to how much deference police officers are given.
IANAL, but based on this blog, I’d say chasing him down with gun in hand was felony assault:
The McMichaels committed an act which placed Arbery in reasonable apprehension of immediately receiving a violent injury; that’s the assault. They assaulted with a deadly weapon; that’s the “aggravated” aspect. Presto, felony assault. But we’re not done yet:
This. If you jog past the front of a pickup truck, and suddenly the guy you were trying to (but not obligated to) avoid is rapidly approaching you again with a shotgun at the ready, ISTM a reasonable person would fear for his life and feel compelled to act in self-defense, e.g. by trying to disarm his assailant. Once it was down to a hand-to-hand fight over control of the gun, McMichael felt compelled to defend himself, too - but it was his role as the perpetrator of felony assault that put him in that position; Arbery did nothing wrong here. I’m still not a lawyer, but Arbery’s assailants ought to be found guilty of felony murder:
The felony assault using a gun was an inherently dangerous felony and resulted in the circumstances that led to McMichaels shooting him. Presto, felony murder.
A uniformed police officer is not evidence of legitimate law enforcement activity, as this other recent case demonstrates:
Also - they were at the wrong house. So a group (let’s called it a “mob”) of armed white men led by a uniformed police officer (off duty, out of his jurisdiction) pushed its way into an innocent family’s home, harassed and threatened them and refused to leave.
But it’s all good:
So proud.
This!! We cannot let “suspicion of thievery” — even certainty of it (or anything else) be an excuse for killing someone.
IANAL either but this could be a legally complicated case. It’s not against the law to pursue someone that is suspected of theft, and depending on the jurisdiction, someone would be well within his legal rights to carry firearms out in the open.
The issue is what immediately turned merely pursuing into a fatal confrontation, and in my mind, it was the decision to block Arbery’s path. It’s hard to know for sure, but it seems from the video that Arbery was given no way to exit the situation - or at least it might not have seemed like he could escape easily. It was therefore perfectly reasonable for him to attack the father (?) who was holding the shotgun. That may or may not have been his only option, but that’s not unreasonable behavior given the situation.
The defense that will likely be employed is some variant of self defense or use of deadly force to protect property. I am not a lawyer and not familiar with Georgia law, but if my understanding is correct, the case may hinge on whether there is evidence that Arbery committed a felony when he was trespassing on the property in question. The perpetrators were probably within their rights to follow and confront Arbery about what he was doing on the construction site, but considering he’s dead, and considering they clearly created the circumstances in which the probability of a fatal confrontation was likely, the legality of their actions will depend on whether they were legally justified in initiating that encounter. From what I understand, and from what Arbery’s family attorney has said, they would need evidence of felony theft (or some other felony) committed by Arbery, or that he was in the process of trying to commit a felony, to justify that encounter. I doubt they can argue that the fight itself was a felony assault - they’re the ones confronting him and blocking his path with deadly weapons, after all.
Boy, just imagine how different this would be playing out if the races of the perpetrators and the victims were reversed. Imagine the headlines we’d be seeing from right-wing media if 2-3 black men had, on video, chased down a white man jogging through a white neighborhood, then shot and killed him… and *then *claimed that they did so because they thought he might be involved in some recent (non-existent) burglaries.
And if a black DA, a friend of one of the shooters, covered for them and refused to press charges? I can’t even imagine the fallout from that, but it’d be horrific.
Were he a white jogger, they would have driven right past him and continued on their way. The white jogger would have arrived home and gone on with his life. They felt entitled to pull over and threaten with guns a Black man they knew absolutely nothing about because, to people like them, just being Black is “just cause”. This kind of thing and things far worse have been routine ever since Black Africans were brought to this country in chains.
They might have had the right to openly carry firearms, but open carry and brandishing are two different things.
Bullshit.
Taking a break from jogging?
Getting out of the sun?
Checking for a water tap to get a drink?
Interest in the construction design or materials being used?
Just plain curiosity?