{"id":9029,"date":"2023-01-24T09:46:20","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T14:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=9029"},"modified":"2025-09-08T21:03:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T01:03:26","slug":"cop-murder-on-the-production-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/01\/cop-murder-on-the-production-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Cop murder on the production line"},"content":{"rendered":"

C<\/span>hiewelthap Mariar, a 26-year old Sudanese immigrant meatpacking worker at the Seaboard Foods plant in Guymon, Oklahoma, was murdered on the evening of January 9 by local police while at his job. He was tased and shot while at his workstation, and management kept the line running up until his death. The next day, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) announced that they were investigating this \u201cofficer-involved shooting\u201d and released a statement<\/a> with their understanding of the events. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) District Union Local 2 called for a federal investigation <\/a>into the death of Mariar.<\/p>\n

Specific details of the incident remain cloudy. According to the OSBI, Guymon police answered a call at 8:19 pm on January 9 \u201cin reference to an agitated and disgruntled employee.\u201d It\u2019s unclear why Seaboard management called the police in this matter. According to Kristen Kinsella, a former Seaboard employee who spoke to me for this story, witnesses say that Mariar was showing signs of needing psychological help that day. But there are no set procedures for dealing with psychological issues among employees, and Kinsella told me that management has a track record of ignoring complaints of workers\u2019 behavior. Moreover, according to David Alvarez, a maintenance worker who was at the plant that day, Mariar\u2019s mother works at the same factory and was not notified of anything amiss until his body was at the hospital.<\/p>\n

Alvarez tells me that Mariar had been fired by a supervisor but had been told by HR to complete his shift. He apparently bumped into the supervisor, whom Alvarez calls \u201ca real cocky guy,\u201d in the hallway, which led to his calling the cops. Whatever happened, when the police arrived, they confronted Mariar at his workstation. It\u2019s very rare in most companies for law enforcement to be called directly to the shop floor, and Kinsella tells me that this has only happened when an employee has been incapacitated or is putting another employee in serious danger. There are no reports that he was threatening anyone at the time.<\/p>\n

The OSBI reports that the situation escalated once Mariar \u201cproduced a knife and began advancing on officers.\u201d At this point, \u201cofficers attempted to de-escalate the situation before eventually deploying a taser. The taser was unsuccessful and Mariar continued advancing on officers at which point an officer fired his service weapon striking Mariar.\u201d Mariar was then \u201ctransported to the hospital where he was pronounced deceased.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Alvarez, who took a video of the event, the knife in question was a band cutter, an extremely common tool in meatpacking plants. While a band cutter can be used as a weapon, it is hard to understand why police felt the need to tase Mariar, why that wasn\u2019t sufficient, and why they then resorted to deadly force. In Alvarez\u2019s video<\/a>, the cops do not appear to be de-escalating, while Mariar appears distressed but not threatening. The OSBI statement claims he was \u201cpronounced deceased\u201d at the hospital, but Alvarez says that he was dead on the plant floor. Mariar\u2019s union, UFCW District Union Local 2, has called for \u201can immediate federal investigation\u201d of what it calls a \u201chorrific incident by Guymon City Police.\u201d In the union\u2019s statement, its president Martin Rosas says that \u201cthe local police did not take sufficient measures to protect [its] members and this worker- brandishing their weapons and ultimately taking the life of a 26-year-old young man who had his whole life before him.\u201d<\/p>\n