‘He Is Not Going to Make It!’: California Cops Sued for Tasering Black Man In Water and Watching Him Struggle to Stay Afloat for 40 Minutes While Doing Nothing to Save Him

Deontae Faison, a 35-year Black father of two, was trying to enjoy a picnic at the park in Oakland with a friend when he was confronted by police over expired tags on the car they had arrived in. The car belonged to his friend, a white woman, but East Bay Regional Parks police officer Jonathan Knea focused his attention on Faison despite having never seen him driving the car into the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline on April 5, according to a federal lawsuit filed earlier this month. Deontae Faison, a 35-year-old father of two, remains in a coma six months after he was tasered by police in California over an expired tag on a car that did not even belong to him. (Photo: Faison family and body camera footage) Believing he was being unfairly targeted, Faison provided police with an alias. But when cops were unable to find that name in their system, they threatened to bring a fingerprint technician to the scene in order to properly identify and check him for warrants. Meanwhile, the white woman who owned the car was never questioned if she owned the car and never had her name checked for warrants and...