Police Watch Arizona Man Drown While Pleading For Help

Three police officers in Arizona are on administrative leave after watching a man drown.

Body cam shows 34-year-old Sean Bickings drowning in a Tempe City reservoir.

New Body Camera Video Shows Arizona Man Pleading Officers For Help Before Drowning

Officers responded to an “alleged fight” between Bickings and a woman claiming to be his wife, Susan.

Officers can be seen approaching the woman as she explains she is having some “conversating issues” with her husband, she stressed that he had not been violent.

The officers then approach Bickings, who is also distraught. As the officers are talking to him, he suddenly climbs over the four-foot railing as he tells them he is going for a swim.

“I’m free to go, right?” Bickings calls back.

“You can’t swim in the lake, man,” they tell him, leaning on the railings. “You’re not allowed to swim in the lake.”

But Bickings jumped into the water and swam out about 100 feet as the officers looked on.

“How far do you think he’s gonna be able to swim?” one officer asked his fellow officer. One of the officers advises keeping an eye on him just in case he gets out, while he goes to call for a boat.

As the officer filming makes his way along the bridge, a bike-mounted officer said, “I’m pretty sure there are turbines at the base of the dam that could suck him under the water.”

The Tempe Police Department provided a transcript of what happened.

“So what’s your plan right now?” the officer asked Bickings in the water.

“I’m going to drown. I’m going to drown,” he replied.

“No you’re not,” one officer tells him.

“Go at least go to the pylon and hold on,” the second officer calls down.

“I’m drowning.”

“Come back over to the pylon.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“Okay, I’m not jumping in after you,” the officer tells him.

“Please help me. Please, please, please,” the victim begs. “I can’t touch. Oh, God. Please help me. Help me.”

Bickings’ last words are “Can you hear me?” Then he slipped under the water.

The officers then turned their attention to Bickings’ frantic wife, who was telling them how much she loved him and cannot afford to lose him; the officers tell her to calm down and even threaten to put her in the patrol car if she didn’t.

The Tempe Police Department said Bickings drowned after “voluntarily entering the water and soon becoming unable to continue swimming.”

“Before entering the lake, he had been conversing, unhandcuffed, with the officers, who had responded to a call about an alleged fight between Bickings and his companion,” police said.

The incident is now under investigation at a state and local level.