Body camera footage shows police left Ohio man handcuffed and face down on bar floor before he died

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio man who was handcuffed and left facedown on the floor of a social club last week has died in police custody and the officers involved have been placed on paid administrative leave .

Police body camera footage released Wednesday shows a Canton police officer responding to a report of an accident and finding Frank Tyson, a 53-year-old East Canton resident, near the bar ‘a neighboring post of American Veterans, or AMVETS.

The accident which occurred around 8 p.m. on April 18 severed an electrical pole. Officer Beau Schoenegge’s body camera footage shows that after a motorist directed police to the bar, a woman opened the door and said, “Please take him out.” ‘Here Now. »

Police grabbed Tyson and he resisted being handcuffed and repeatedly said, “They’re trying to kill me” and “Call the sheriff,” as he was taken to the ground.

They held him down – including with a knee on his back – and he immediately told the police that he couldn’t breathe. A recent Associated Press investigation found that those words – “I can’t breathe” – had been ignored in other cases of deaths in police custody.

The officers told Tyson that he was fine and that he should calm down and stop fighting because he was face down, cross-legged on the carpet. Police joked with passersby and looked through Tyson’s wallet before realizing he was in a medical crisis.

Five minutes after body camera footage recorded Tyson saying “I can’t breathe,” one officer asked another if Tyson had calmed down. The other replied: “He may be missing.”

Tyson telling officers he was unable to breathe echoes events leading up to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020. Tyson was black, according to the coroner’s office. The race of the officers has not been confirmed.

Tyson did not move when a police officer told him to get up and tried to knock him down. They shook him and checked his pulse.

Minutes later, an officer said medics had to “step up” because Tyson was unresponsive and the officer wasn’t sure he could feel his pulse. Officers began CPR.

The Canton police report on Tyson’s death, released Friday, states that “shortly after securing him,” officers “recognized that Tyson was unresponsive” and that CPR had been performed. Doses of Narcan were also administered before medics arrived. Tyson was pronounced dead at the hospital less than an hour later.

Chief Investigator Harry Campbell of the Stark County Coroner’s Office said Thursday that an autopsy was performed earlier in the week and Tyson’s remains were transferred to a funeral home.

His niece, Jasmine Tyson, called the video “nonsense” in an interview with WEWS-TV in Cleveland. “It seemed like forever until they finally got him under control,” Jasmine Tyson said.

Frank Tyson was released from state prison on April 6 after serving 24 years in a kidnapping and robbery case and was almost immediately declared a post-release control violator for failing to appear at a parole officer, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. .

Two officers from the township traffic bureau, Schoenegge and Camden Burch, have been placed on paid administrative leave while the Ohio Attorney General’s Office of Criminal Investigation examines the case.

In a statement released Thursday, the Bureau of Criminal Investigation said its investigation would not determine whether force was justified and that the prosecutor or a grand jury would decide whether charges related to the use of force were justified.

In a statement released Wednesday, Township Mayor William V. Sherer II said he personally expressed his condolences to Frank Tyson’s family.

“As we navigate this difficult time, my goal is to be as transparent as possible with the community,” Sherer said.

Since the mid-1990s, the US Department of Justice has recommended that police officers roll over suspects as soon as they are handcuffed, due to the risk of positional asphyxiation.

Many police experts agree that a person can stop breathing if they are held on the chest for too long or carry too much weight, because this can compress the lungs and put pressure on the heart. But when done correctly, putting someone on their stomach does not automatically put their life in danger.

An Associated Press investigation published in March found that more than 1,000 people died in a decade after police restrained them by means not intended to be lethal, including prone restraint.

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Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.