Deadly California arrest carries echoes of George Floyd case

Autopsy findings on the cause of death have not been released, but the family of 26-year-old Mario Gonzalez blamed police, accusing them on Tuesday of using excessive force and escalating what should have been a minor encounter with the unarmed man.

SHARE Deadly California arrest carries echoes of George Floyd case
In this image taken from Alameda Police Department body camera video, Alameda Police Department officers attempt to take 26-year-old Mario Gonzalez into custody, April 19, 2021, in Alameda, Calif. The video goes on to show officers pinning Gonzalez to the ground during the arrest that ended in his death.

In this image taken from Alameda Police Department body camera video, Alameda Police Department officers attempt to take 26-year-old Mario Gonzalez into custody, April 19, 2021, in Alameda, Calif. The video goes on to show officers pinning Gonzalez to the ground during the arrest that ended in his death.

AP

SAN FRANCISCO — Police in Alameda, California, are under fire over the death of a Hispanic man who was pinned to the ground for more than five minutes in a video-recorded arrest that unfolded as a jury in Minneapolis was deliberating in the George Floyd case.

Autopsy findings on the cause of death have not been released, but the family of 26-year-old Mario Gonzalez blamed police, accusing them on Tuesday of using excessive force and escalating what should have been a minor encounter with the unarmed man.

“The police killed my brother in the same manner they killed George Floyd,” Gerardo Gonzalez said.

In a statement, the San Francisco Bay Area city said it is “committed to full transparency and accountability in the aftermath of Mr. Gonzalez’s death.”

The death is under investigation by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, the district attorney’s office and a former San Francisco city attorney hired by Alameda to lead an independent probe. The three officers involved in the arrest have been placed on paid leave.

Gonzalez stopped breathing following a scuffle with police on the evening of April 19 at a park, where officers had confronted him after receiving 911 calls that said he appeared disoriented or drunk. A police statement said Gonzalez had a medical emergency after officers tried to handcuff him.

The arrest took place just hours after the jury at the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin began deliberating. The next day, Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter for pinning Floyd to the pavement with his knee on the Black man’s neck in a case that was likewise documented on video and touched off a national reckoning over racism and police brutality.

In Alameda, the nearly hourlong video from two officers’ body cameras released late Tuesday shows police talking to a seemingly dazed Gonzalez, who struggles to answer questions.

When Gonzalez doesn’t produce any identification, the officers are seen on video trying to force his hands behind his back to handcuff him, but he resists and they take him to the ground. They repeatedly ask him for his full name and birthdate.

“We’re going to take care of you, OK. We’re going to take care of you,” one officer says on the video.

“I think you just had too much to drink today, OK? That’s all,” the officer says. Later, he adds, “Mario, just please stop fighting us.”

Gonzalez, who weighed about 250 pounds, is seen grunting and shouting as he lies face down on wood chips while the officers restrain him. One officer puts an elbow on his neck and a knee on his shoulder.

“He’s lifting my whole body weight up,” an officer says at one point.

One officer also appears to put a knee on his back and leaves it there for about four minutes as Gonzalez gasps for air, saying, “I didn’t do nothing, OK?”

Gonzalez’s protests appear to weaken, and after about five minutes he seems to lose consciousness.

Shortly before he stops breathing, one officer asks the other: “Think we can roll him on his side?”

The other answers, “I don’t want to lose what I got, man.”

The video shows officers rolling Gonzalez over and performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. They are also seen administering at least two doses of Narcan, which is given to counteract opiate overdoses. Gonzalez was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Police also made public two calls dispatchers received about Gonzalez that prompted them to send officers to the park, which sits at the end of a cul-de-sac of well-kept homes with manicured gardens. One caller said Gonzalez was “kind of talking to himself” and “not making any sense”

The caller added: “I mean, he’s not doing anything wrong, he’s just scaring my wife.”

A second man told a dispatcher that Gonzalez had two drugstore baskets with alcohol bottles and that it appeared he was breaking the security tags off them.

Gonzalez had a 4-year-old son and also was the main caretaker of his 22-year-old brother, who has autism, his family said.

Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina and an expert on police use of force, said officers should have rolled Gonzalez over as soon as they could. Keeping him on his stomach was “probably the worst thing that could have happened,” Alpert said.

“Once they’re controlling him, as we learned from the Floyd trial with all those medical experts, this position or compression is deadly,” he said.

He added: “Obviously he’s in some sort of mental crisis, and what’s the goal? What are they trying to do with him? Was he a danger?”

___

Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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