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A Los Angeles resident and cousin of BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors has died after being pulled over by multiple police officers for allegedly causing a traffic incident, attempting to flee from police and resisting arrest.
The man, Keenan Darnell Anderson, 31, exhibited erratic behavior before officers repeatedly arrested him in the middle of a busy Los Angeles street on January 3.
Following the incident, he was transported to a local hospital, where approximately four and a half hours later he experienced a medical emergency and died. A preliminary toxicology report found cocaine metabolites and cannabinoids in his system.
Anderson repeatedly refused to cooperate with police instructions after causing a traffic incident in Los Angeles. The lengthy confrontation eventually led to the tasing of him.
The Los Angeles Police Department claimed that Anderson had been responsible for the car crash in the Venice area and was in the middle of the street “exhibiting erratic behavior.” Officers attempted to conduct an investigation of a driver operating under the influence.
After his passing, Cullors took to Instagram to mourn his cousin’s death and blame the LAPD for his murder.
Cullors said Anderson was an educator who “worked with school-age children.”
“I was an English teacher,” he wrote. ‘LAPD has killed three people this year, one of them is a member of my family.’
‘Keenan deserves to be alive right now, his son deserves to be raised by his father. Kennan, we will fight for you and all of our loved ones affected by state violence,” he wrote.
A social media post by Anderson’s sister addressed her brother’s death and expressed a similar sense of injustice. “I sincerely believe that Keenan Anderson, my brother, was killed by the LAPD,” she wrote.
‘I can’t wait to see this body cam footage.’
The more than 19 minutes of duration video Documentation of the tasing incident posted online by the Los Angeles Police Department shows Anderson behaving erratically and walking on the street without shoes.
When initially approached, he begins to cooperate with the officer and sits on the sidewalk, though his behavior is erratic and he repeats the phrase ‘they’re trying to kill me’.
Minutes later, he gets up when the officer tells him to stay seated and walks away down the middle of the road with cars driving down it. Then, the policeman gets on his motorcycle to follow him and again calls for reinforcements.
When he catches up with Anderson, the officer tells him to roll over on the ground, which Anderson refuses to do.
In the aftermath of his death, BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors took to Instagram to mourn the death of her cousin and blame the LAPD for his death.
Anderson repeatedly said that someone was trying to kill him during the incident.
Police officers who arrived at the scene asked Anderson several times to calm down and listen to them. He ran away and refused his instructions, actions that led to him being electrocuted.
Eventually, other officers arrive and force Anderson to the ground as he yells, ‘They’re trying to sedate me. I know too much.
He also yells, ‘They think I killed C Lo’ and ‘C Lo is trying to kill me’ several times.
During one point in the fight, he yells, “They’re calling me George Floyd,” apparently referring to the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
As Anderson continues to physically fight the multiple officers who repeatedly ask him to calm down, he is warned that he will soon be electrocuted if he doesn’t stop.
He is eventually electrocuted multiple times as he continues to fight, all the while yelling at the officers. He continued to speak even after being electrocuted when Fire Department officials and EMTs arrived.
As he is loaded into a wheelchair for transport, officers tell Anderson that he will be taken to a local hospital in Santa Monica, where he died hours later.
Video posted online by the LAPD features body camera perspectives from several different officers on the scene, as well as a bystander citizen who observed the traffic incident that led to the dramatic altercation.
Citizens in the background of the stop filmed the incident and talked to each other about the traffic incident that had occurred earlier. One man said Anderson had tried to steal his car before police arrived.
The officers repeatedly gave Anderson instructions which he refused to follow. He was warned that he would be electrocuted if he did not physically comply with his instructions to deliver
In the background of the citizen’s video, a driver can be heard saying that Anderson tried to steal his vehicle before police arrived.
An LAPD communications officer said the Los Angeles County coroner’s office will conduct its own independent toxicology report following Anderson’s death.
LAPD has classified Anderson’s death as “in custody” and said its Force Investigative Division will conduct an investigation.
The police department appears to have released footage of the incident ahead of time, as “body-worn video” is usually released “45 days after a critical incident,” according to the force.
On the same day, the Los Angeles police fatally shot a man armed with a sharp object in South Los Angeles and the day before, another man holding a large knife was shot and killed.
After the incident, BLM Los Angeles wrote in a statement: “A minor traffic incident should not lead to death.”
Keenan Anderson with his son, who is now 6 years old. He was reportedly an English teacher working with high school kids.
Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of BLM, has faced a degree of scrutiny for spending donor funds on luxurious Los Angeles properties that she lied about for years.
The Black Lives Matter Network was founded in 2013 by three women: Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi.
As the movement grew, it focused on advocating for the defunding of various police forces and law enforcement departments.
Last May it was revealed that Black Lives Matter donated $200,000 during its 2021 fiscal year to a Chicago group led by famed police activist Richard Wallace.
In 2020, Cullors told WBUR: “The demand to defund law enforcement becomes a central demand in how we actually get real accountability and justice.”
“It means that we are reducing the ability of law enforcement to have resources that harm our communities,” he added.
Cullors has also come under ongoing criticism for amassing a property portfolio that seems at odds with his self-described ‘trained Marxist’ persona. Yet many facets of the mainstream media have refused to cover his multimillion-dollar California estate that was purchased with funds from his work as an activist.
In an interview with the Associated Press last year, Cullors denied allegations that he had personally benefited during the six years he ran the BLM foundation, but admitted to lying about using some of that property.
Notably, he admitted to using a $6 million Los Angeles home purchased with BLM money for non-BLM personal businesses, after previously denying it.