North County Police Cooperative officer gives a thumbs up as he poses for photo while holding dead Black man's arm.
A disturbing photo which was sent by an anonymous law enforcement official to News 4 KMOV in St. Louis, shows a white police officer holding a dead black man's arm, and giving a thumbs up as he poses for the photo.
The man has been identified as 28-year old Omar Rahman.
Omar Rahman
Rahman was found dead on August 8th inside a home in Pine Lawn, just outside St. Louis.
The photo shows a smiling North County Police Cooperative officer wearing blue gloves, holding Rahman's arm, while he gives the camera a thumbs up.
While initially Rahman's cause of death was unknown, the medical examiner's office has since ruled it an accidental drug overdose.
Rahman's mother however isn't so sure.
"I really don't know actually, what happened to my son," Kim Staton told news media.
Antonio Romanucci
"It's hideous," Antonio Romanucci, Statin's attorney said, adding, "The implications of this photograph are just astronomical."
Romanucci said in all his years practicing law and looking at forensic photographs, he has never seen a photo as disturbing as this, where a police officer is posing with a dead body.
"I have seen thousands and thousands of forensic photographs, I have never seen a staged photograph of an officer next to a deceased body."
The photo has brought outrage from many on social media.
In a Facebook post, one man wrote:
"Expect more of this--a reversal of recent progress--if Trump is elected. Look at this piece of shit cop, posing with the body of a young man he just killed, as if he were a big game hunter with a safari kill or a Navy Seal who just bagged Bin Laden! Revolting scum of a cop!"
Attorney Romanucci is calling for a full investigation.
But don't hold your breath.
You see, North County Police Cooperative Police Chief Tim Swopes, who has declined to go on camera has also refused to see the photo.
Says a lot about where any "investigation" will go, when the person in charge of the police department which employs an officer who posed for a photo with a dead man, doesn't seem interested in holding that officer accountable for his disgusting behavior.
North County Police Cooperative Chief Tim Swopes
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