Body cam video shows Alameda officer kneeling on Mario Gonzalez before death

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The family of a man who died during some sort of "scuffle" with Alameda police is contradicting the official narrative of how he died after a private viewing of a body camera video in the last moments of his life.

In an interview on Tuesday morning with KTVU, brother Gerardo Gonzalez and his attorney, Julia Sherwin, said they saw three officers putting their weight on Mario Gonzalez's back on April 19 at the far end of Pocket Park. One of those officers, both said, had his knee on the 26-year-old's neck. The ordeal lasted about five minutes, Sherwin said.

"What I saw was different from what I was told," Gerardo Gonzalez said. "The medical emergency [that police described] was because they were on his back while he was lying on the ground. It was brought by the officers on top of his head."

However, late Tuesday afternoon, Alameda police released the roughly hourlong video, which showed an officer's elbow on Gonzalez's neck, and his knee placed on the Oakland man's right shoulder. Occasionally, the knee shifted to the base of Gonzalez's neck.

Police had received a call about Gonzalez possibly being drunk in the park and when the officer arrived, Gonzalez had two alcohol bottles with him, at least one of them was open.

Officers tried to handcuff Gonzalez after he didn't hand them identification. No law requires that people must identify themselves to police.

As he lay prone on the ground, Gonzalez, who weighs about 250 pounds, was heard grunting and yelling out "Ahhhh" at times. There was heavy breathing from the three officers at the scene, who were trying to restrain Gonzalez. Meanwhile, the officers also can be heard talking soothingly to Gonzalez, asking him his name and his birthday. One officer said, "I got you man" and appears to brush back Gonzalez's hair.

One officer comments he thinks he’s had too much to drink. Before he warns Gonzalez to stop kicking, an officer asks another if he thinks they can roll Gonzalez on his side. The officer responds "I don’t wanna lose what I got, man."

Then, Gonzalez appears to lose consciousness. One officer comments, "We have no weight on his chest." He then stops another officer who looks like he’s about to put weight on his chest and says, "No! No weight, weight, no weight." But it’s too late. They turn Gonzalez over and start chest compressions. Gonzalez died later at the hospital.

Gerardo Gonzalez said it was "heartbreaking" to watch the video on Monday at Alameda City Hall with his mother, Edith Arenales, who watched the life get snuffed out of her firstborn son, a chef and construction worker, who has a 4-year-old son and was the primary caregiver to his brother, Efrain, who has autism.

Gonzalez never tried to kick or threaten the officers, said Sherwin, who reviewed the body camera video of an "Officer McKinley" with the family.

The visual evidence shows Gonzalez is very disoriented and is not necessarily complying with the officers but he is also not actively fighting them, despite officers repeatedly telling him "don't fight me."

"This would have felt like torture," said Sherwin, who is an expert in restraint asphyxiation and was called in as a consultant to help prosecute former police officer Derek Chauvin in the George Floyd case.

She sees many parallels, not only in how it appears as though Gonzalez died but in the narrative, or lack thereof, portrayed by the Alameda police.

Moments after Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd last May, the original press release about Floyd's death titled "Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction" re-circulated on the internet, showing how police never told the full story of Chauvin sitting on his neck for nine minutes.

Absent from the nearly 200-word post is any mention of officers restraining Floyd on the ground, a knee on his neck, or any sense of how long this "interaction" lasted. It's written passively with blatant omissions of what actually transpired.

And that's how Gonzalez's supporters are reading the Alameda police department press release, too.

"There was no relation to reality," Sherwin said of the initial police press release regarding Gonzalez's death in which police described he died of a "medical emergency" following a "scuffle." "Police often give a false narrative."