Body camera footage shows police leaving an Ohio man handcuffed and face down on the floor of a bar before he died

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) – An Ohio man who was handcuffed and left face down 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 a crash and finding Frank Tyson, 53, of East Canton, at the bar of a nearby American Veterans (AMVETS) facility.

As a result of the accident that took place around 8 p.m. on April 18, a power pole broke down. Footage from Officer Beau Schoenegge’s body camera shows that after a passing driver directed police to the bar, a woman answered the door and said, “Please get him out of here right now.”

Police grabbed Tyson and he resisted being handcuffed and repeatedly said, “They’re trying to kill me” and “Call the sheriff,” before putting him on the floor.

They immobilized him – including a knee on his back – and he immediately told officers he couldn’t breathe. A recent Associated Press investigation found that these words – “I can’t breathe” – have been disregarded in other cases of deaths in police custody.

Officers told Tyson he was OK to calm down and stop fighting because he was lying face down, cross-legged, on the carpeted floor. Police joked with passersby and went through Tyson’s wallet before realizing he was having a medical crisis.

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

Tyson telling officers he couldn’t breathe recalled the events leading as much as George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020. According to the coroner’s office, Tyson was black. According to the police department, each Canton Police Department traffic bureau officers who were placed on leave, Schoenegge and Camden Burch, are white.

Tyson didn’t move when the officer told him to stand up and tried to knock him down. They shook him and checked his pulse.

Minutes later, the officer said doctors needed to “step up” because Tyson was unresponsive and the officer wasn’t sure if he could feel a pulse. The officers began resuscitation.

A Canton police report on Tyson’s death released Friday said that “shortly after securing him,” officers “determined that Tyson was unresponsive” and that cardiopulmonary resuscitation was performed. Narcan doses were also administered before the doctors arrived. Less than an hour later, Tyson was pronounced dead at the hospital.

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Chief investigator Harry Campbell of the Stark County Coroner’s Office said Thursday that an autopsy was performed earlier this week and Tyson’s stays were taken to the funeral home.

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

According to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, Frank Tyson was released from state prison on April 6 after serving 24 years for kidnapping and theft and was almost immediately deemed in violation of post-release supervision for failing to report back to his parole officer. .

A Tyson member of the family reached by phone Thursday declined to right away comment.

The Ohio Attorney General’s Office of Criminal Investigation said in a statement Thursday that its investigation is not going to determine whether the use of force was justified and that a prosecutor or grand jury will resolve whether use-of-force charges are warranted.

Canton Mayor William V. Sherer II said he personally expressed his condolences to Frank Tyson’s family.

“As we navigate through this difficult time, my goal is to be as transparent as possible with the community,” Sherer said in a statement released Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Justice has warned police officers since the mid-Nineties to perform belly rolls on suspects immediately after being handcuffed because of the risk of positional asphyxiation.

Many police experts agree that somebody can stop respiratory in the event that they are restrained on their chest for too long or with an excessive amount of weight, as this may cause pressure on the lungs and strain on the heart. But if done appropriately, placing someone on their stomach is just not life-threatening.

An Associated Press investigation published in March found that greater than 1,000 people died in the decade after police restrained them with nonlethal measures, including prone restraints.