The local district attorney blocked police from making arrests immediately after the Feb. 23 shooting death of unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, two county commissioners said Friday — with one accusing the two of being in cohoots because they were friends.
Cops at the scene of the Georgia shooting had believed they had probable cause to make arrests, Glynn County Commissioner Peter Murphy told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution — but were told to stand down by the DA’s office.
“They spoke to an assistant, who relayed their request to [Glynn County District Attorney] Jackie Johnson,” Murphy told the paper of the cops at the scene.
“They were told not to make the arrest.”
“She shut them down to protect her friend McMichael,” a second county commissioner, Allen Booker, told the paper.
Johnson had recused herself from the case entirely a few days after the shooting, Booker said.
Travis McMichael, 34, and his father, Greg, 64, were arrested Thursday, more than two months after Arbery was shot.
The father is a former cop who had worked as an investigator for the DA’s office, the paper reported earlier Friday. He had helped prosecute Arbery in the past, when he was in high school, on a weapons charge.
Johnson’s office did not respond to the Journal-Constitution’s request for comment on Murphy’s account.
Arbery’s 26th birthday would have been today.
“I saw the tape and it’s very, very disturbing,” President Trump said Friday of a video that emerged Tuesday showing the pair scuffling with the unarmed Arbery before he is shot and falls to the ground.
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