{"id":40212,"date":"2025-03-26T20:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=40212"},"modified":"2025-03-26T22:04:28","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T03:04:28","slug":"phoenix-officers-suspended-for-24-hours-after-repeatedly-punching-deaf-man-with-cerebral-palsy-during-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=40212","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix officers suspended for 24 hours after repeatedly punching deaf man with cerebral palsy during arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Tyron McAlpin was arrested last year and was initially charged with assaulting police and resisting arrest, but those charges were later dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Three Phoenix police officers will receive 24-hour, unpaid suspensions, and two of them must undergo more training, after&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/video-phoenix-police-using-taser-punching-deaf-man-cerebral-palsy-scru-rcna175305\">the arrest of a deaf man who has cerebral palsy<\/a>&nbsp;last year, the police chief said Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Tyron McAlpin was arrested on Aug. 19, 2024, after a man who was involved in a fight at a convenience store pointed to McAlpin \u2014 who was walking by \u2014 while talking to officers, according to a police report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Video showed McAlpin<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/video-phoenix-police-using-taser-punching-deaf-man-cerebral-palsy-scru-rcna175305\">\u2002arrested<\/a>&nbsp;almost as soon as police exited their vehicle. McAlpin was punched and shocked with a stun gun, the video shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">McAlpin had been charged with felony aggravated assault and resisting arrest, but Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/charges-dismissed-deaf-man-cerebral-palsy-was-tased-repeatedly-punched-rcna176231\">dismissed those charges<\/a>&nbsp;in October after reviewing the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">McAlpin&#8217;s attorney said at the time that the officers\u2019 injuries during the arrest resulted from their \u201cfrenzied and violent attack on Tyron.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe Department identified policy violations\u201d following an administrative investigation into the arrest, the Phoenix Police Department said in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The statement did not identify the officers. A police spokesperson said the department was not naming the officers because a possible appeal process is pending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">All three offices received 24-hour unpaid suspensions, and two of them will be required to undergo additional de-escalation training, the department said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The suspensions are for 24 hours in total, so if officers work eight-hour shifts, that would be a three-day suspension, police said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOur priority is always the safety and well-being of our community and our officers. We understand the concerns raised by this incident, and we take them seriously,\u201d Interim Police Chief Michael Sullivan said.The incident occurred after someone called 911 about a fight at a Circle K store, police said in an incident report. The caller said a white man was the aggressor and was still inside the store, according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The man pointed to McAlpin, who is Black, and claimed he assaulted him, police wrote in the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">McAlpin\u2019s attorney, Jesse Showalter, said police used excessive force and didn\u2019t interview the Circle K employee or anyone to ask what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In the video, \u201cwhat you see is simply Tyron trying to avoid being struck repeatedly by the officer who repeatedly swings punches at his face,\u201d Showalter said in October.There is no indication that the officers knew McAlpin was deaf or had cerebral palsy before his arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOur goal is to learn from this and move forward together as a stronger department and community,\u201d Sullivan, the interim police chief, said in Wednesday&#8217;s statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Showalter did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment sent to his law firm late Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/phoenix-officers-suspended-24-hours-repeatedly-punching-deaf-man-cereb-rcna198296\">nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tyron McAlpin was arrested last year and was initially charged with assaulting police and resisting arrest, but those charges were later dropped. Three Phoenix police officers will receive 24-hour, unpaid suspensions, and two of them must undergo more training, after&nbsp;the arrest of a deaf man who has cerebral palsy&nbsp;last year, the police chief said Wednesday. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":40213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1152],"tags":[2450,1726,1553],"class_list":["post-40212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanrights","tag-arrest","tag-officers","tag-phoenix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40215,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40212\/revisions\/40215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}