Once again, police prove they can abuse and attack innocent Black people and get away with it.
The latest example is from Arizona, where a pair of Phoenix cops who last year received a 24-hour suspension for brutally attacking a deaf Black man with cerebral palsy while responding to a call of a white man creating a disturbance – had their suspensions overturned after the cops appealed, local media reported.
White Man Who Triggered the Violent Arrest Walked Free
But the lawsuit filed by Tyron McAlpin remains pending and will likely result in a payout considering the egregiousness of the incident that was captured on video, showing the cops punching, kneeing and tasering him in the parking lot of a Circle K on August 19, 2024.
Despite not committing any crimes, McAlpin ended up spending 24 days in jail on charges of felony aggravated assault on an officer and resisting arrest because he could not afford the bail. The charges were eventually dismissed.
Meanwhile, the white man creating the disturbance who falsely accused McAlpin of stealing his phone, Derek Paul Stevens, was never arrested, according to Maricopa County court records.
Instead, he was described as the “victim” in police reports while McAlpin was described as the “suspect” even though Stevens had falsely accused McAlpin of stealing his phone.
It was a blatant case of white privilege combined with racial profiling, taking the white man’s word while not giving the Black man a chance to speak, that led to demands the cops be arrested and fired from national advocacy groups.
Cops Claim They Were Victims
Instead, Phoenix police officers Kyle Sue and Benjamin Harris were granted 24-hour suspensions, the equivalent of three 8-hour work shifts, a slap on the wrist described by protesters as a slap in the face to McAlpin.
But the cops who claimed to have been the victims from the get-go appealed to the Phoenix Civil Service Board, which is made up of citizens, which reversed the suspensions with no public explanation or reasoning.
Sue’s 24-hour suspension was reduced to a written reprimand and Harris’ suspension was wiped out completely. Although the civil board provided no public explanation of its decision, the city of Phoenix confirmed it in a vague statement to local media.
“Because the Civil Service Board operates independently, the City and Police Department do not have authority over its decisions,” the statement read.
Watch video of the arrest below.
Cops Believe Lying White Man
McAlpin’s lawsuit was filed on March 5, 2025, by Phoenix attorney Jesse M. Showalter, accusing the officers of assault and battery, negligence, and violating his Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unlawful search and seizures.
It also accuses the city of “allowing and encouraging Phoenix police officers to escalate situations by using force that was not reasonable or necessary under the circumstances.”
And it describes how the Circle K clerk who called police was very clear in describing it was the white man creating the disturbance, not the Black man.
Despite this knowledge, the cops who arrived began speaking to Stevens instead of the store clerk who falsely accused McAlpin of stealing his phone.
The Circle K employee made clear that the white man was the aggressor and that she wanted him removed from the store.
Officers Harris and Sue responded to the Circle K. Officer Harris did not speak to the complaining Circle K employees to find out what had happened. Instead, Officer Harris spoke to D.S.
Officers Harris and Sue did not handcuff D.S. or ask him to sit down. Nor did they ask for his identification. Had they checked his identification and arrest history, the officers would have discovered that D.S. had a history of recent arrests for disorderly conduct and assault.
In conversation with Officer Harris, D.S. claimed that an African American man had assaulted him.
D.S. then pointed at Tyron, who was walking eastbound on Indian School, and alleged that Tyron was the African American man who had assaulted him.
Body Camera Footage Exposes Cops
Body camera video shows the cops pulled up to him and began attacking him, never giving him a chance to explain his side of the story.
“I think I broke my hand,” said one of the cops after repeatedly punching McAlpin on the back of the head while he was lying facedown on the ground.
The phone that McAlpin was holding was his phone, and he was using it to communicate with his wife through a video call the entire time he was in the store.
She showed up to the arrest scene minutes after he had been attacked by the cops.
“You guys arrested him for no reason,” she said. “I’ve been on the phone with him since Circle K, and you guys went in there because somebody was f_cking with him.”
“And you guys arrested him?”
Maricopa County court records show it took two months before prosecutors dismissed all the charges against him on October 21, 2024. The cops were handed 24-hour unpaid suspensions in March 2025, which they apparently never served.
