- Police Brutality Watch

Lawyers for White Cops Call Tyrone Johnson an "Evil Man" [more]

The city will pay $70,000 to the teenage daughter of a man who died during a 1999 struggle with police as they tried to arrest him on a traffic warrant. The settlement was approved in U.S. District Court earlier this month and is in addition to an undisclosed amount 15-year-old Ashley Johnson will receive from Southwest Ambulance, which was transporting her father to Kino Community Hospital when he died. A lawsuit by Johnson accusing the city and the ambulance company of negligence and the city of excessive force ended in a hung jury last year. Tyrone Johnson, 28, had a past conviction for drug possession and resisting arrest, and spent about nine months in jail for a probation violation before his Aug. 8, 1999, encounter with the police that led to his death. Officers said they used pepper spray on Tyrone Johnson to subdue him and after he was handcuffed, he complained he couldn't breathe. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The Pima County medical examiner found Johnson had a significant amount of cocaine and traces of morphine in his system when he died. [more] and [more]

Gasping for Air Tyrone Johnson was "spent." He was gasping for air. He posed no threat to anyone around him; he wasn't about to run, or to lash out at the cops who'd beaten and pepper sprayed him, or to battle the firefighters and EMTs who had loaded him face-down in an ambulance with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was given no oxygen--something that is administered as routinely as nine out of 10 calls, according to one of the firefighters who responded to the call to evaluate and treat Johnson after Johnson briefly fled from two Tucson policemen on Aug. 8, 1999. [more]

Improper Care? After police subdued Tyrone Johnson with three shots of pepper spray and up to 11 strikes with metal batons, Tucson Fire Department paramedics and Southwest Ambulance EMTs failed to properly diagnose, monitor and treat Johnson, according to testimony from a longtime emergency room physician. [more]