New video in Phoenix’s violent arrest of deaf man with cerebral palsy

By Dave Biscobing

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    PHOENIX, Arizona (KNXV) — Tyron McAlpin said he tried to alert Phoenix officers of his deafness before they repeatedly punched and tasered him.

But they never let him.

“The officers took me down… And I told them, I was trying to get to my ears to tell them I can’t hear, I can’t hear, pointing to my ears,” he said through an interpreter as he used sign language. “I was trying to gesture, and that’s when the cops grabbed me. (I was) trying to show, hey I can’t hear, pointing to my ears, and they grabbed me.”

Captured on body camera video, that’s the immediate account a handcuffed McAlpin gave to an interpreter and medical worker in the hospital about 90 minutes after his arrest.

The police footage obtained by ABC15 shows two officers were present during the medical examination, and it provides the first and only public version of McAlpin’s side of what happened in the violent arrest that captured international headlines.

So far, his attorneys have only spoken on McAlpin’s behalf and he chose not to testify at a preliminary hearing. [All charges have since been dropped.]

McAlpin also told hospital staff he passed out during the arrest from being tasered and was having trouble seeing out of his left eye along with neck and chest pain.

The video of McAlpin in the hospital is one of several new pieces of body camera footage obtained by ABC15.

The new footage further proves that officers knew heading to a trespassing / fight call at a gas station that store employees had reported a white male in a grey shirt and blue shorts as the aggressor.

The main officer involved in the arrest, Ben Harris, repeatedly spoke to himself on the way to call.

At times, he chanted the description: “White male, 20s, grey shirt, blue shorts.”

The video also shows that the white man made a series of false allegations that led officers to go after McAlpin.

In several videos recorded after the violent arrest, store employees told officers that the white male had previously gotten into a fight the night before. They also said McAlpin is a regular at the store, who often holds the door open for people and was trying to help them get the man out of the store.

The officers who punched and tasered McAlpin did not verify any details about what happened with store employees before taking the white man’s false allegations against McAlpin at face value, according to the new footage.

New video also highlights some discrepancies between what officers claimed at the scene and what they said under oath to cement charges against McAlpin.

One example: Harris immediately told another officer at the scene that he broke a bone in his hand from giving McAlpin head strikes; but in court, he said something different.

“At one point, when I was trying to regain control of his arm, following his initial swings, punch swings, it appears that these fingers were jammed in his forearm, and bent over all the way to my palm,” Harris testified.

The incident is still under an ongoing criminal and internal investigation.

Following ABC15’s reporting on the initial arrest, Officers Harris and Kyle Sue were placed on administrative leave.

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