Maricopa County attorney drops charges against Tyron McAlpin after violent Phoenix police arrest
Maricopa County attorney drops charges against Tyron McAlpin after violent Phoenix police arrest
Maricopa County attorney Rachel Mitchell announced Thursday that she is dropping all charges against Tyron McAlpin, a deaf Black man with cerebral palsy who was violently arrested by Phoenix police.
McAlpin, who is deaf and has cerebral palsy, was immediately grabbed and repeatedly punched and shocked with a Taser by the two officers — one of whom can be heard in body cam footage complaining that he broke his hand throwing punches.
McAlpin was then charged with two felony counts of aggravated assault and one felony count of resisting arrest — he spent 24 days in jail because he could not afford the $7,500 bond.
This incident comes just months after the Department of Justice released its report finding that Phoenix police discriminate against minorities and routinely use excessive force — including unjustified deadly force.
Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/sgoXj
So they assaulted the guy without any provocation, beat the crap out of him, lied about it...
So these police officers will be immediately fired and placed on a permanent no-hire list and then taken to court where a jury of their peers will send them to jail, right?
Right?
The long story makes it even worse. The cops were responding to a 911 call for a white man who was causing a big problem. They got there and talked to that person, and that person said that the black man across the street started it, or some such story. For reasons unknown (racism? lunacy?) the cops decided to take the word of the actual suspect, who would obviously lie to avoid getting in trouble.
Then the cops lied on the police report. They said the victim had resisted, but they didn't give him time to resist before beating him. They attacked him less than a second after getting out of their car. Even if he had been able to hear, he would have still been beaten down. In the police report, they say he attacked them, but a quick view of the video proves it's the opposite.
Yes, there are theoretical situations where cops need to use force right away, but the facts here don't support it. A he-said-she-said situation where nobody is armed or fighting or running away, that's a quick legal analysis. And even if hypothetically there were justification, they lied on the police report, which only shows that they knew it was wrong.
And after beating him down, and after his girlfriend explaining that he's deaf, the cops still spoke as if he could understand them, and they refused to let the girlfriend use sign language to establish basic communication. To me, this last point feels worse than everything else. They simply refused to see him, or his girlfriend, as human beings that ought to be treated with any kind of basic respect.
The US's biggest problems is the police problem. The whole fucking thing needs to be started over from the ground up. Right now, they intentionally hire thugs and protect those thugs.
Step one is dismantling the Police Unions, which give all other unions a bad name
Ffs, I would hope so. Now prosecute the cops who beat him.
Pyay that man his myoney
Great, they did the minimally sane thing. Now how is that investigation going?