CANTON, Ohio — A newly released police body camera video from an in-custody death in Canton bears several similarities to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.
The video shows Canton police officers attempting to arrest 53-year-old Frank Tyson after crashing his car on April 18. In the video, one officer can be seen placing his knee on Tyson's body, and Tyson is heard saying "I can't breathe" before he goes motionless.
"Deep disappointment... but not surprised," said Dr. Yohuru Williams, history professor and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas, who has also extensively studied systemic racism in policing in Minnesota.
"I think unfortunately, despite the conversation [after] the killing of George Floyd, especially with regards to African Americans and the African American community, very little has changed," Dr. Williams said. "There's been a lot of dialogue about efforts toward reform, but unfortunately it's something we've seen before, this impetus to try to create meaningful pathways to reform, but then videos like this prove that these practices continue and continue to cost lives."
Williams notes the bodycam video is likely to trigger a visceral reaction for many viewers, particularly in communities of color.
"Wounds produce narratives, and in communities of color, this is such a familiar scenario that we've seen over and over again. It's like a bad movie that replays," Dr. Williams said. "There's nothing about that encounter, at least that we can see from the bodycam footage, that would make it seem like it was acceptable to engage in the level of brutality that they used to subdue him. And then we see this image of the knee, yet again, 30 seconds applied to Frank Tyson's body, we hear him say 'I can't breathe,' we hear him ask the officer to remove his knee, then we watch him lie there motionless with the officers and the other patrons of the bar doing nothing to address this man who clearly is unconscious at this point. It's just very disturbing."
Investigators have not released Tyson's autopsy report, and no decisions have been announced on whether prosecutors will take any action against the officers involved.
"There will be those who will say, we have to wait until all the evidence is out," Dr. Williams said. "There'll predictably be calls to look into Frank Tyson's background, his past criminal behavior, but I would argue, and I think it'll be true, most people will look at this, particularly in communities of color, particularly in the Black community, from the lens of, this is the wound again, here we go again."