The police chief of Phoenix said Wednesday that three officers will be off duty for 24 hours without pay, and two of them must get more training because they arrested a deaf man with cerebral palsy last year.
A man who was in a fight at a grocery store pointed at Tyron McAlpin as he was talking to police on August 19. McAlpin was then arrested.
A video showed that McAlpin was arrested almost as soon as the cops got out of their car. The video shows that McAlpin was hit and shocked with a stun gun.
McAlpin was charged with felony aggravated assault and refusing arrest, but in October, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell dropped the charges after the case was looked over.
At the time, McAlpin’s lawyer said that the officers’ injuries during the arrest were caused by their “frenzied and violent attack on Tyron.”
Phoenix police said in a statement on Wednesday, “The Department identified policy violations” after looking into the arrest on an administrative level.
The message didn’t name the police officers. A police spokesman said that the department would not name them because there might be an appeals process going on at the moment.
The police department said that all three workers would be off duty for 24 hours without pay, and that two of them would have to get more training in how to calm down a situation.
Police say the suspensions last for a total of 24 hours, which means that if a cop works eight-hour shifts, the suspensions would last for three days.
“To the safety and well-being of our community and our officers will always come first.” “We understand the worries that this event has caused, and we take them very seriously,” said Michael Sullivan, the acting police chief.
There was a fight at a Circle K shop, and someone called 911 about it, according to a police report. The report says the caller said a white guy was the aggressor and was still in the store.
Police wrote in the report that the man pointed at McAlpin, who is black, and said he hit him.
Jesse Showalter, McAlpin’s lawyer, said the cops used too much force and didn’t talk to the Circle K worker or anyone else to find out what happened.
He said in October that what you see in the film is “just Tyron trying to avoid being hit repeatedly by the officer who repeatedly swings punches at his face.”
It doesn’t look like the police knew McAlpin was deaf or had cerebral palsy before they caught him.
He said in a statement on Wednesday, “Our goal is to learn from this and move forward together as a stronger department and community.”
When an email asking Showalter for a response was sent to his law firm late Wednesday afternoon, he did not answer right away.
