Man dies after being restrained by cops

(ANSA) - ROME, 12 OTT - A 39-year-old man arrested by Carabinieri in Lodi near Milan Monday died after suffering a medical emergency while being restrained on the ground. The man died in the hospital, having been taken there after receiving initial aid from the officers themselves. The victim was stopped at the request of local residents. He had been on the perimeter wall of a private home, allegedly after attempting a burglary. The man was restrained on the ground because he was shouting and thrashing about; he then went into cardiac arrest and was resuscitated using a defibrillator before being transported to the hospital, where he died a few hours later. The Prosecutor's Office is gathering statements from the Carabinieri and reviewing 112 emergency calls. It is the latest in a string of cases of men who have died while being restrained by Italian cops. A 42-year-old Moroccan man, Abderrahim Fakir, died while being restrained by two policemen in Bologna on July 19. Fakir died after being pinned to the ground face down. He was allegedly suffering from a "psychiatric crisis" and was disturbing the peace and acting erratically. Police lawyers have said he had consumed twice a lethal dose of cocaine but his family lawyers have said he had taken less than half that amount. The case has been likened that of Riccardo Magherini, a 39-year-old man who died while being arrested by Carabinieri police in Florence in 2014. Italy was condemned to pay damages by the European Court of Human Rights over Magherini's case earlier this year. Italian rights groups and police critics have compared the cases to that of George Floyd, an African American man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd had used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. One of four police officers who arrived on the scene, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for almost ten minutes, fatally asphyxiating him. After his murder, a series of protests against police brutality, especially towards African Americans, quickly spread nationally and then globally. His dying words became a rallying slogan: "I can't breathe". (ANSA).
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