The Phoenix police department has disciplined three officers who violently used a stun gun on and punched a deaf Black man with cerebral palsy last year.
The department’s interim police chief, Michael Sullivan, announced that he had issued 24-hour unpaid suspensions to the officers who were involved in the arrest of Tyron McAlpin last August, which was filmed on video. Two of the officers will also be required to attend de-escalation training, Sullivan said.
Sullivan did not name the three police officers, but in the video of McAlpin’s arrest the two officers who were seen assaulting him were identified in media reports as Benjamin Harris and Kyle Sue. The third officer has been identified in media reports as Jorge Acosta.
In a statement on Tuesday reported by 12News, Sullivan said: “We understand the concerns raised by this incident, and we take them seriously. The decision to suspend the officers reflects our commitment to accountability and maintaining public trust.”
Last October, McAlpin’s attorneys released video footage of his violent arrest which occurred on 19 August outside a Circle K convenience store in Phoenix.
According to a police incident report, officers responded to a call about a fight in the store. ABC15 reports that the 911 caller said a white man was causing a disturbance in the store. The police officers, Harris and Sue, approached the man who claimed that he was assaulted while trying to stop someone from stealing a bike. The man proceeded to point to McAlpin, who was walking nearby, as the aggressor.
Body-camera footage showed the officers approaching McAlpin in a parking lot, where they ordered him to lie on the ground. In the police incident report, Harris wrote: “His hands raised to deliver targeted punches at my face/head, and multiple swings with closed fists at my head.” Harris also claimed that McAlpin had a “fighting stance with his legs planted for stability and force delivery” and that McAlpin “made it clear to me in the moment that he was not simply assaulting me in order to get away but engaging in assaults to cause me harm and injury”.
However, the body-camera footage as well as additional surveillance camera footage showed Harris lunging out of his car first and charging towards McAlpin, who initially had his arms by his side. The body-camera footage proceeds to show one of the officers saying “tase him”, and while McAlpin is pinned to the ground the officers stun him four times. The body-camera footage also showed the officers punching McAlpin at least 10 times on the head and back.
Last November, McAlpin filed a $3.5m notice of claim against the city and the three officers who were involved in his arrest.
In response to the release of McAlpin’s footage last year, Andre Miller, vice-president of the Arizona chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said: “This brutal assault was due to the false claims of a white citizen, reminiscent of many falsehoods like Emmett Till that have claimed the lives of black citizens in America … Tyron was not a suspect in an actual crime, he had not done anything wrong, and he also has communication challenges.”
Meanwhile, the president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, Darrell Kriplean, condemned the officers’ latest suspensions, saying: “We are appalled by the determination made by interim chief Sullivan to suspend the three officers involved in the McAlpin case. A situation that was previously reviewed internally by subject matter experts of the force evaluation and review unit and deemed to be within policy has suddenly been reversed due to public pressure, based on biased media reporting.”
