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In the days and weeks after Ahmaud Arbery was shot dead, several Glynn County law enforcement officers did not fully investigate his death and, in one case, refused to allow police officers to make arrests, he has learned. The Guardian.
Arbery, 25, was running through the neighborhood on the outskirts of Brunswick, Georgia, on February 23 when two white men shot him dead. Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, were charged with aggravated murder and battery on Thursday night, after graphic footage from the murder video was released and sparked national outrage.
Arbery’s family attorneys called the murder “modern lynching” and denounced the lack of action in the case before the video was released, pointing to racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.
In the police report, Gregory McMichael claimed that Arbery “violently attacked” his son, who shot Arbery in self-defense.
Jackie Johnson, the Glynn County District Attorney, declined to allow responding police officers to arrest the two men, Glynn County Commissioner Peter Murphy told the Guardian in a phone call on Friday.
The police department contacted one of Johnson’s assistant district attorneys after the shooting, but Johnson made the decision not to charge the father and son, as the former worked in his office for more than 20 years, Murphy said.
“Police at the scene approached her and said they were ready to arrest them both,” Allen Booker, Glynn County District 5 Commissioner Allen, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday. “These were the police officers at the scene who had conducted the investigation. She closed them to protect her friend McMichael.
Days later, Johnson recused himself. Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
By February 27, George Barnhill, the Waycross Judicial District Attorney, and the second of three prosecutors in the case, took office. Less than 24 hours after viewing the video and evidence compiled by police, Murphy said, Barnhill decided not to charge the McMichaels.
“And so, within 24 hours, two separate DA offices told Glynn County Police not to make any arrests,” Murphy said. “And obviously they don’t want to take any responsibility for their actions.”
On April 2, Barnhill sent an email to law enforcement authorities saying that Arbery was “apparently aggressive in nature” and that his family “was no stranger to the local criminal justice system.”
“Arbery’s past mental health records and convictions help explain his apparent aggressive nature and his possible pattern of thinking to attack a gunman,” Barnhill said in the email, which was first reported by the New York Times.
“It appears that he was deliberately trying to attack the character of the victim and there is simply no reason for that,” said Chris Stewart, one of the attorneys representing the Arbery family.
The family has pointed to McMichaels’ connection to the local police, both in the district attorney’s office and in the police department, as evidence of systemic flaws and obstacles in their quest for justice. It was only after the video of Arbery’s death was released this week that the third prosecutor’s office requested the participation of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).
On Friday, GBI Director Vic Reynolds told reporters that he could not “answer what another agency did or did not see” in the first two months of the investigation.
“But I can tell you that, based on our involvement in this case and considering the fact that we started operating on Wednesday morning and within 36 hours that we got arrest warrants for two people for serious murder, I think that will says it all. “
In an email sent April 7 to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office, Barnhill recused himself because his son worked on an Arbery-related case while working at Johnson’s office.
Lee Merritt, one of the lawyers representing the Arbery family, said that Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, found the connection between Barnhill’s son and his on Facebook and brought it to the attention of his office.
She followed the links. This is exactly how it happened, “he told The Guardian on the phone Friday.
According to a police report filed on February 23, Gregory and Travis McMichael grabbed their weapons, a .357 Magnum revolver, and a shotgun, jumped into a truck, and followed Arbery as he ran.
In the email sent to Carr in early April, Barnhill references a “decent cell phone video of the entire shooting incident,” an apparent reference to this week’s filtering.
Reynolds said Friday that the investigation into the shooting, the video and the person who filmed it would continue.
“Every stone will be discovered,” said Reynolds.
