1y ago

Bodycam video shows handcuffed man telling Ohio officers 'I can't breathe' before his death

www.nbcnews.com

In video of the April 18 encounter, Frank Tyson can be seen lying motionless on the floor of a bar for more than 5 minutes before police check him for a pulse.

The Canton Police Department in Ohio has released body camera video from the night a 53-year-old man died after he repeatedly told officers “I can’t breathe” as he was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and he was pinned to the ground.

In video of the encounter on April 18, the man, Frank Tyson, can be seen lying motionless on the floor of a bar for more than 5 minutes before police check him for a pulse and about 8 minutes before CPR is started.

In the nearly 36-minute video, police respond to the scene of a single-car crash to find a downed power pole and an unoccupied vehicle with the driver’s side door open and an airbag deployed.

87 comments

So the police killed him. Wish titles would stop pussy footing around.
- Yeah. The details are in the article. Officer had his knee on the victims upper back for at least 30 seconds while the victim begged the officer to move as he couldn't breathe. At some point he stopped responding entirely while the officers were holding him. He needed immediate medial attention from the instant he stopped breathing. Instead of helping him officers told him "shut the fuck up you're fine". And only after he had stopped moving for 5 minutes did they check and realize he was dead.
  The knee on the upper back position is illegal. The correct thing to do is to have 1 officer hold his shoulders steady and the other hand cuff him. If there's only 1 officer present (which there never should be), there are many other holds that are not life threatening. I think it's entirely fair and legitimate to say that they killed him. It's not libelous, or exaggeration, they killed him and did not seek medical attention when he very clearly stated he wasn't able to breathe. That's manslaughter and negligent homicide at least.
  
  They'll get a paid vacation and possibly early retirement with pension for the trauma this murder caused them.
  
  And only after he haf stopped moving for 5 minutes did they check and realize he was dead.
  And then it took them extra 3 minutes to decide they might want to do CPR.
- Its too much to ask for what should be an anti-police story related to them murdering a civilian to not use passive voice to describe the murder.
  
  Yes because it's not an anti-police story, it's a reporting of events with which you can use your brain to reach a conclusion. What you're describing is better suited for commentary like this thread.
- Maybe they just don't like lawsuits? There is a reason the word allegedly is used so often.
  
  Police unions are litigious
- There are actually written laws...
  
  Watch the autopsy "find" that he was high on weed or some other shit
  
  Because even though there's a video showing that a cop killed a man, everybody (even cops) is innocent until proven guilty. Otherwise, you could get into a trial for slander and for having caused distress.
I don't understand why officers always ignore people when they ask for medical help. If someone says they can't breath, that's a clue that you should do something different, not leave them on the floor handcuffed.
How is it that police are still trained to respond to situations this way? The negligence is obvious. This isn't the same as what happened with George Floyd, but nonetheless very negligent.
- It's because they don't see them as people, they see them as violent criminals that the world would be better off without.
  If you step into their shoes for a minute, and one of the criminals you just successfully took off of the streets said they can't breathe, your first thought might be "good. Maybe that'll teach you a lesson about doing crimes in my neighborhood." Your second might be "I wish I could shoot you right now and get this over with, but maybe I'll get lucky and I can say I didn't hear you."
  Note that the second one is inherently a stupid thought, there's body cams. That kind of logic didn't stop my 5-year-old from telling me she cleaned her room when I could easily check and find out she didn't, and it won't stop cops from fantasizing about everything working out here.
  That's exactly why they do things that way. They're living out a fantasy world where there are no real rules and there are no consequences, and they have to live a balancing act between indulging in that and dealing with reality. Sometimes cops fail to balance that, and that's what we see here.
  As for who trains them, it's their fellow cops. This isn't a bunch of individual fantasies, these men work and train and talk together about how it'd be so much better if they had less restrictions and just talk about that hypothetical world. New cops who have any kind of racism or similar "My group is best" can join the conversation and add in their own unique version to the group fantasy. New cops who aren't already racist, though, won't hear blatant racism. No, they will just hear about crime stats and reoffending rates, about cops that died trying to deal with all the supposed crime, and about how stopping them is justice and will help everyone, not just cops. In time they'll share the group fantasy, too, and stop seeing their victims as people. Occasionally someone just doesn't join in the fantasy and they get bullied until they quit.
  This is why the easiest way to move forward from this kind of thing is to gut the police departments and start over, or we at least need bodycams that can't be turned off so easily.
  
  It’s because they don’t see them as people, they see them as violent criminals that the world would be better off without.
  If you step into their shoes for a minute, and one of the criminals you just successfully took off of the streets said they can’t breathe, your first thought might be “good. Maybe that’ll teach you a lesson about doing crimes in my neighborhood.” Your second might be “I wish I could shoot you right now and get this over with, but maybe I’ll get lucky and I can say I didn’t hear you.”
  Conservatives in general think this way. That's why there was a desperate need to find something to blame Trayvon Martin for to justify Zimmerman's killing him. It's why they bring up the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse killed a registered sex offender as if Rittenhouse was somehow aware of that. It's why they bring up the fact that Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes, as if that should have been a death sentence.
  And so on and so on.
  
  Maybe, but it didn't used to be this way even as recently as the 80s. And it isn't like this in most other countries (at least the European ones km aware of).
  It's a cultural thing, and training, and it can be fixed, we just have to want to fix it bad enough. No idea what will be the tipping point. George Floyd wasn't enough, so I'm not sure what if anything will be. Or if we'll just go deeper I to this police state mentality where everything is an us vs them situation.
- I used to be an EMT (am going to be working as one again soon) and where I worked we had some good cops and some real shitty cops who had no business being cops, but one thing that they all had in common was that the rules were if someone asked for medical help, they had to call the ambulance. Didn't matter if it looked like obvious bullshit, all the departments in the area I worked had a blanket policy that they weren't medical professionals and they couldn't make that decision. You could have a tiny little cut on your finger and ask for medical help and even the shittiest cops would sigh and call for EMS. These cops infuriate me. How many more people have to get murdered? If someone asks for help fucking help them and sort out the details later.
- Because cruelty is the point.
- Did you even read the article? This was a case of very clear negligent.
  they care nothing for the people they "protect and serve" only for the power they're allowed to wield
  Yes, there's literally a Supreme Court case stating that police have no obligation to protect and serve. Why are you ranting at me about something very off topic?
  I understand people are just overall frustrated, but this entire comment you made has nothing to do with the article, or this particular police interaction.
- Because the power of inflicting pain without consequences is the main reason why most people become cops.
  
  I don't believe that for a second. People get into policing for all kinds of reasons. But the common denominator is that the barrier to entry is very low these days, and they expect to be hiring people with intelligence below a certain level. It has been explicitly stated as such by a number of police departments around the country.
  When your entire workforce is filled with grunts just following orders they don't generally have the best critical thinking skills.
  Are there some people who get into it for the reason you mentioned, probably. But, if you think everybody joining the police is doing it for that reason, you're sorely mistaken.
- I don't understand why officers always ignore people when they ask for medical help.
  Not to appear to be defending the cops, but I would expect a lot of people who are being arrested for legitimate reasons (and again, I'm not talking about this specific case) are motivated to lie to the police in an attempt to get out of the situation.
  
  Also they clearly didn't take this guy seriously since he was yelling, "They want to kill me!" before they even touched him. They probably thought he was crying wolf. Better training would mean they wouldn't have used an illegal hold and killed him, they'd probably have taken him seriously if they knew the dangers at that particular moment in time...plus with better training over a long enough period of time people wouldn't be as scared of the cops in the first place so there wouldn't be any miscommunication. It's still clearly the fault of modern policing but you can understand why it happened at least. Super tragic.
- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wh2spkbaARA
  Just ... jump to some random parts of that video. Or this...
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3WPNj3IuOOE
  Or even this...
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=863aE25HQ5M
  It's because plenty of people in the general public lie, take advantage, abuse any angle they can.
  I don't agree with officers delaying CPR and pulse checks, they absolutely should be looking for genuine signs of distress or injury... But, I get why their faith in humanity is trashed to the point they don't actually expect to find anything.
  
  Police are cowards and bullies. They treat everyone as a suspect rather than a human.
- I'd guess there are a lot of people who make excuses when getting arrested, and saying you are having a medical emergency is an easy one. If you're a cop who sees this a lot, you would eventually start assuming everything people say was just an attempt to get pity or leniency.
  The other possibility is that all cops are bastards.. But I'm guessing its a mix of the two.
ACAB
- 😴
I guess something more drastic then the George floydd protests is required.
- Something like a schmevolution.
This shit again!?! gumbles while digging out body armor mutters under breath, these fucking idiots need to lose their god damned jobs... they won't even get jail time OK I'm ready... ACAB and all that puts on gas mask lets do this shit again
- I used to go out wearing a leather corset (not tightened) and leather bra under my shirt. Shit was literal body armor.
  
  AC +2
  
  Literal Fallout 4 raider armor
  
  raider
ACAB
I live near Canton. I cannot express the rage, disappointment, and sorrow I feel at this. I fucking hate having the conversations. It is so soul crushing to hsct to explain to loved ones who get brainwashed that "killing bad".
Haven't read the story yet but... was this a white guy? I'm going to guess not,
Yeah do Yankees like to kill Black men?
- They're just the ones who have a tougher time getting away with it, slavery stan.
- "Yankees"? The title clearly states that this happened in Ohio, which is about 500 miles away from New York.
  
  Yankee means like 10 different things depending on where the speaker is from
  
  Clearly a Mets fan. Everyone else is a Yankee to them.
I’m not defending the police here, but could this man have had a heart attack due to the presence of drugs or alcohol in his system, combined with the fact that his heart rate was elevated by resisting arrest? He does not appear to be in good physical condition. I see that his stomach looks a little distended and he sort of waddles as he took steps around the bar area. I’m not condoning the knee on the back, or the amount of elapsed time before checking for a pulse, but I think they should conduct a toxicology test and publish the report soon. Also, the article claims he crashed his car before running into the bar. He might have sustained injuries from the crash, and then exerted himself by running from the scene. There is a lot that occurred in this incident before the police arrived at the bar.
- "I'm not defending police here" procedes to defend police
  
  No.
- I’m not defending the police here, but
  Oh boy, here we go.
  could this man have had a heart attack due to the presence of drugs or alcohol in his system, combined with the fact that his heart rate was elevated by resisting arrest
  Totally. He could have also died from a brain aneurysm, aliens, a very advanced case of SIDS, or a witch's curse. Or, you know, maybe he died from the whole not being able to breathe thing that was actually happening.
  He does not appear to be in good physical condition. I see that his stomach looks a little distended and he sort of waddles as he took steps around the bar area.
  He didn't look like he was in great shape? Only fitness buffs and marathon runners with no booze in their systems get to live though being cuffed? Tf is wrong with you.
  
  Why are you getting so upset? He's taking a very rational approach and asking relevant questions.
  You should really work on your insecurity.
- Even if the knee on the back is not the cause what the fuck is wrong with the officers to just brush off his plea for help? Say he has an asthma attack and couldn't breath, after he's handcuffed on the floor there's not much he can do himself. If you immobilised someone you need to take care of them. If they die in your care while calling for help at the least it's negligence.
- Funny, I remember the same question being asked about George Floyd... he had a heart condition, you see.
- Do you think any of those things you suggested are more likely than the cause of death being the knee in his back?

87 comments