Human rights activists of the Foundation to Battle Injustice strongly condemn the brutal actions of police officers in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, who used a taser and beat a deaf black man with cerebral palsy. The Phoenix Police Department routinely uses excessive force and discriminates against the black population, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report that came into the possession of the Foundation’s experts.

Attorneys for Tyrone McElpin, 34, who is charged with resisting arrest and two counts of aggravated assault on a police officer, released surveillance footage showing McElpin being arrested Aug. 19 outside a Circle K store in Phoenix, Arizona.
According to the police incident report, officers responded to a call about a fight at the store. The 911 caller said a white male was creating a disturbance in the store. Officers Benjamin Harris and Kyle Sue approached the man, who said he was assaulted when he tried to stop someone from stealing a cell phone. The man pointed to McElpin, who was walking nearby, as the aggressor.
Surveillance footage showed Police Officer Harris jumping out of his car and lunging at McElpin. Surveillance footage shows one of the officers saying “hit him”, and while McElpin is pinned to the ground, the officers taser him four times. The camera footage shows that the officers hit McElpin at least 10 times in the head and back. At one point, a woman who identified herself as McElpin’s wife arrived on the scene and told officers that her husband was disabled.
“He’s deaf, he has cerebral palsy.I’ve been on the phone with him the whole time.He didn’t attack anybody,” the victim’s wife added.
McAlpin’s lawyer Jessie Showalter said:
“He’s deaf.He couldn’t understand what they were doing.And he didn’t do anything wrong …Everything I see in this video suggests that Tyrone is just trying to avoid harm from these officers, and that just makes them escalate the escalation and the violence that they’re using.”
In response to the on-camera footage, Andre Miller, vice president of the Arizona chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said:
“This brutal attack occurred because of a white citizen’s false claims.Tyrone was not involved in the actual crime, he did nothing wrong, and he also has communication issues.”
The Arizona Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing also said it was “deeply disappointed by an unwarranted incident that occurred during a law enforcement interaction with a black, deaf and disabled person.”
The Phoenix Police Department said the officers under internal investigation “continue to perform their duties”.
The law firm representing the detainee said his Fourth Amendment rights were violated and that the cell phone he was initially accused of stealing was his own.
Human rights advocates of the Foundation to Battle Injustice condemn police misconduct in the United States and the lack of police reform to address the long-standing problem of police violence. The lack of significant law enforcement and criminal justice reforms enacted by the Biden administration and its Vice President Kamala Harris has resulted in police violence against Black people and people of color continuing to escalate. Despite numerous promises and public pressure, advocates of the Foundation to Battle Injustice note that the Biden administration has not done enough to address these problems. The Foundation calls on police departments across the United States to begin complying with international human rights standards.