We posted the story of Carol Ann Gotbaum a few days ago. The details were sketchy: she missed her flight, became irate, was placed in handcuffs, then placed in a detainment cell, and then wound up dead several minutes later.
The Phoenix police have since released a video of her arrest:
A witness at the scene said,
that Gotbaum was screaming, “I’m not a terrorist! I’m a sick mom! I need help!”
A police officer put his knee in Gotbaum’s back to restrain her while other arresting police grabbed her flailing arms, one worker told the Daily News.
“I believe she was a little not-there,” the worker told the newspaper. “She kept punching. She kept screaming. She kept kicking. She looked really scared, really frightened. I think she was afraid to go to jail.”
Of course her family is simply shocked how she could have killed herself in such a way:
“We have strong concerns about how this 110-pound woman may have ended up strangling herself, given that she was cuffed behind her back and shackled to a bench.”
And not surprisingly, the family’s attorney Michael Manning has doubts too:
“Are you kidding me? You really think it happened this way?”
And he’s not the only one with serious and disturbing doubts:
One officer used a knee to her back. Some speculate that could have been Gotbaum’s fatal moment.
“When a person is lying prone and someone is lying on the back of the person, the person can’t breathe,” said former NYPD Captain Edward Mamet. That’s known as compressional asphyxia. Her attorney says the police could have killed Gotbaum right then and there. ”
The witnesses that saw her just before she went into the holding tank say she was completely listless and unconscious,” said Manning.
She didn’t appear to be “listless and unconscious” after her arrest in the video above. But there could have been a later incident not shown on the video. The results of autopsies will be released soon. Hopefully we’ll have some concrete answers then.
SN
While I can appreciate the interest in this story, I don’t think it should have been posted.
Reading all the posts above, they show a common theme. Ignorance and speculation. A better time would have been to wait until the medical examiner’s report made things a little clearer. Until then we run the risk of another “Duke” case.
The only facts in this case that we know for sure are: The woman died. She was on her way for treatment. After her arrest, she walked to the police office. She was handcuffed and shackled to the bench. The how she died and the police complicity in that are unknown.
And why hasn’t #4, RBG been edited as inappropriate?
I’m surprised the dirty PIGS didn’t ‘Taze’ her.
After all she weighed 110 lbs . She obviously could have beat the pigs to a pulp.
The pigs are totally out of hand!
>>Obviously, as new facts are coming to light
Whenever anyone “just dies” in police custody, there will ALWAYS be new facts that come to light. Unless somehow the ubiquitous video cameras conveniently became non-functional at just the right minute.
>>Don’t see the normal bad cop motivation elements there.
Oh, I see it, in spades. Somebody who as sassed off to the cops, and then been rendered helpess (handcuffs, taser maybe). That’s the way, unh-huh unh-huh, they like it. Unh-huh unh-huh. Probably they only meant to scare her and rough her up a little (rather than kill her), but bad cops are happy as “pigs” in shit when faced with tihs kind of situation.
SN
Further to my #32,
Just read the next post, #33, as an example of what I mean.
I agree with the poster who thinks it’s great that cops are beating up, tazering, pepper spraying and murdering white middle class America. Now white people can get a taste of what the cops have been dishing out to minorities all these years. A note to the police; continue f*cking up white America. The rest of the country will ultimately understand what racist viscious scum you boys in blue are all about.
Ease up on the cops. Most people know that if you behave like that to a cop, you are getting cuffed. If you resist getting cuffed, you are going to the ground. Those are the rules, play by them and dont get hurt.
Surprisingly, there is no video of that 110 pound woman strangling herself during the the 3 minutes she was locked up in her holding cell.
But that is certainly what happened according to the nine 250 pound officers that were interviewed.
My wife is a social worker and one time I we came upon a woman who was acting wild and crazy.
The cops, at the scene, were ready to pepper spray and club her. My wife first had to deal with the police and begged them to back off for a few minutes.
Then my wife — with nothing but words — got her to calm down and go with the police voluntarily.
I’ll guess my wife saved the city hundreds if not thousands of tax dollars in court and jail charges by spending just a few minutes talking with the woman so she’d get hospitalization without any criminal charges. All it took was a little skill (she was just a student at the time) and about ten minutes.
Later, we happened to run into that same woman and she thanked my wife for intervening with calm and kindness rather than force.
Cameras everywhere but the holding cell? That sounds dumb, considering who is most likely to be tossed in one and how often the cops get charged with brutality, etc.
I’ve had to restrain with people who have gone batshit. It cannot be done without someone getting scuffed up or injured. You have to get into the mix in order to appreciate the problems.
And a 110 pound maniac can do a whup ass job on a couple of big men, if the maniac has lost all sense of self preservation and the men don’t do not recognize the danger.
As for her being a mother? Sheesh. Big deal. What does a woman need in order to be a mother? A couple of minutes of stupidity and being to lazy to get an abortion.
Gregory, provide a cite if you want to claim the compression killed her that much later.
>>Cameras everywhere but the holding cell? That sounds dumb,
>>considering who is most likely to be tossed in one and how often
>>the cops get charged with brutality, etc.
You think it’s just a coincidence that they had no camera in the killing fields? And that just so happens to be where she died? {snicker}.
Turns out she is an alcoholic and was going to her destination to begin treatment. Here is more info, link at the boddem.
From CBS News: Tape Shows Scuffle Before Airport Death
#39 – Well Greg… sounds like your wife knows something that many posters here don’t. Sometimes there is something behind a behavior other than just being bitchy. But some here seem like pretty blunt instruments, so its no wonder they don’t bat at eye at the notion of armed linebackers beating up and killing a tiny 45 year old woman in an airport.
After all, had she not been subdued, she might have cried some more…
Comments like “if you act that way in front of cops, what do you expect” fails to take a few things into consideration… One, maybe they aren’t acting, and two, we expect a higher level of professionalism from cops… I wouldn’t hire these guys to do overnight duty on a Christmas Tree lot.
And I’m sorry Fusion, but this is a well deserved black eye to airports, law enforcement, and the culture of fear perpetuated by the ill-advised and ineffective Department of Homeland Security…
…and on a totally unrelated note, am I the only person who finds the word “Homeland” in this context to be a little ominous? Isn’t is just a little to similar to Fatherland or Motherland and doesn’t it just seem a tad too ripe for an Uber Alles to be added?
Excuse me…
Dibs on her in-flight meal.
And a Diet-Coke, please.
w
#39 Greg…that’s the direction I was heading as I read the posts. The poor woman simply was distraught and only needed some compassion and a calming influence. Apparently the cops at the scene weren’t trained properly. And yes, traveling alone was probably a bad idea. Making a connection is stressful enough, I do it plenty, and I’m a pretty calm guy.
What an awful story.
from the video the bad actor appears to be the copper in shorts. He walks up, and she reacts, and keeps trying to keep her distance from him. (I would, too, that kind of “swagger” and body language usually means a bully….) She looks like she was having a panic attack….and the first guy she was talking to (gate agent? pilot?) seemed to be having “communication” wit her. But the second the bully walks up, it turns bad. So this is how airports deal with psychic breaks? GREAT.. they’re idiots.
I hope the bully cop chokes on a ham sandwich. He looks like he’s way past the point of “needing a good beating to knock some sense in him”. Psycho’s in uniforms are the worst kind of psycho.
As for all the sheeple who stood around just watching…… you idiots!
Yes, someone could have, perhaps intervened. But, no one has any guts or sense of morals anymore. It’s rarer and rarer to find. The poor woman was standing there crying out for help…..and everyone just walked around her like she was so much luggage.
What is wrong with society? THIS…
It takes more than training. Uncommon
sense and real maturity are required,
unless you’re trying to run a police state.
Since they take only psychos, I’m betting
they’re trying to run a police state.
Latest from Arizona Republic:
http://tinyurl.com/2rrvcu
J/P=?
#43,
And I’m sorry Fusion, but this is a well deserved black eye to airports, law enforcement, and the culture of fear perpetuated by the ill-advised and ineffective Department of Homeland Security
This is only a black eye because this has become a feeding frenzy of accusations without any proof. So little is known about what actually happened yet nearly every post is so ready to slander the police as having killed her.
Has anyone thought that maybe she choked on her own vomit? Or she OD on medication?
See NY Times, http://tinyurl.com/2kybvw
No, it is easier and sexier to paint the police and officials as the bad guys. These ill-informed posts and raving illogical rants do more to institute fear than what the police have done. This trait is the same as when he loudest voice explains the unknown wonders of the universe and we get religion.
#49 – I think if the cops want fairer treatment, they might consider not killing so many innocent civilians year after year.
#50, Good rebuttal point. That does not mean every police victim was innocent or every cop is a murderer.
How many cops does it take to push a black guy down a flight of stairs? None, he fell.
I have been at airports and experienced the fascist attitudes of security personnel there, so I have little doubt that they over-reacted. Once I was talking with an airline security dude about the ID procedures (I always seem to get “selected” for extra searching) and he threatened to have me *arrested* and denied the ability to board my flight just because I used the words “hijack” and “bomb” in conversation with him. I was not making a threat of any kind; I think I said something like “Let’s use some common sense, it’s not like I have a bomb or am planning to hijack the plane oor something.” These people are typically power-tripping goons who like to throw their weight around, and with all the fear and paranoia the authorities have promoted about terrorism, they are in a climate where they feel like they have a license to do so.
More than 2,000 people died in the United States during arrests between 2003 and 2005.
As many as 54 percent were killed by police.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/071011/usa/us_crime_society