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 .
Watch our original coverage of this incident in the player below.
Phoenix officer repeatedly punch, Taser deaf Black man with cerebral palsy