Newly released Ahmaud Arbery video shows 2017 shoplifting arrest
Newly released police bodycam video shows Georgia slay victim Ahmaud Arbery being handcuffed and arrested for shoplifting in 2017.
The video, dated Dec. 1, 2017, shows Arbery and three teenagers being confronted by police in the parking lot of a Walmart shopping center, according to the footage posted on YouTube on Tuesday.
“Tell me about the TV,” a police officer asks.
“TV? What? We don’t have any TV,” Arbery, wearing shorts and a parka, responds.
“What about the 65-inch TV?” the cop says.
“Sixty-five-inch TV?” Arbery says.
“Do me a favor,” the cop replies. “All of you take a seat.”
“Take a seat for what?” Arbery snaps back. “I don’t know nothing about no TV. … I don’t steal no TV.”
Another man, presumably a Walmart employee, approaches and the police officer tells him, “it’s that one right there with the fur jacket” — suggesting Arbery — and the man nods.
“What TV?” Arbery says. “The TV is in there,” motioning toward the store.
Arbery then claims he has a receipt and tries to get up from the ground, but is placed in handcuffs and put into a squad car.
He’s driven back to the store, where he and the three teenagers are seen walking into the back of the store and into a rear office, where the video eventually ends.
According to WSB-TV in Atlanta, Arbery later pleaded guilty to stealing the TV and was sentenced to five years of probation.
The release of the footage comes one day after another bodycam video shows a confrontation between Arbery a month earlier at a local park. In that video, police attempt to tase Arbery while he is being questioned about sitting in his car in the park.
S. Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Arbery family told the station the video shows the “criminalization of blackness itself.”
Arbery, 25, has been the subject of a national outcry over his Feb. 23 shooting death, allegedly by two white men, who chased down the unarmed black jogger in their Brunswick neighborhood.
Gregory McMichael, 64, a former Glynn County cop and investigator for the district attorney’s office, and his 34-year-old son, Travis McMichael, were charged with murder earlier this month after cellphone video of his death went public and caused widespread outrage.
The McMichaels claimed they believed Arbery was a suspected burglar after he was spotted at a nearby construction site — which has since become a morbid tourist stop.
An extended version of the video released by a lawyer for Arbery’s family shows he was chased for more than 4 minutes before Travis McMichael confronted him and shot him twice at close range with a shotgun during a scuffle.