A woman and a man stand looking down at an unseen headstone. The woman is wearing a tshirt that says "murderer." The man has his arm around her shoulder in comfort.
Monique West, left, mother of Ty’rese West, looks over Ty’rese’s headstone along with 'Cycle' co-director William Howell.
Cycle is a new award-winning documentary about the shooting of a Black teenager by a Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, white policeman. Co-directed by Racine-born filmmakers Laura Dyan Kezman and William Howell, Cycle recounts the fatal encounter on Juneteenth 2019, between bicyclist Ty’rese West and Sgt. Eric Giese. Cycle screens at the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 12 at Music Hall.
“It all happened in 90 seconds,” Kezman tells Isthmus. “Ty’rese was in a desolate area, headed north on Racine Street after visiting his girlfriend in Kenosha. Giese was on patrol, at 1:30 in the morning, alone with a canine, spots Ty’rese, immediately puts his [SUV] lights on and initiates the stop,” because “according to the story he’s told, Ty’rese did not have a light on his bicycle…Ty’rese keeps pedaling, pedals faster and Giese attempts to stop him.”
A chase ensues, and on foot “Giese apparently tries tasing him, misses, and eventually catches up with Ty’rese once he falls. Allegedly, he sees a gun on the ground and shoots him twice in the forehead.” (Cycle contends that the 18-year-old’s DNA was not on the pistol, which wasn’t registered to him.)
The filmmakers pieced together what seems to have taken place based on sketchy information, including the police report, intermittent dispatch audio, and Giese’s deposition, which Kezman states “is very rare. Officer’s depositions are typically not filmed and not available for public viewing. The fact that we have that is very exclusive,” says the cinematic sleuth, who obtained the court footage commissioned by Ty’rese’s mother, Monique West and her attorneys, who — unlike the police and district attorney — cooperated with the documentarians.
Amid lots of twists and turns, the well-made 98-minute nonfiction film chronicles the struggle in and out of court by Monique and her family to get accountability for the slain teen. After the district attorney and Mount Pleasant and Racine police departments declined to press charges against Giese or discipline him, Monique filed a civil federal suit in December 2019 against the man the aggrieved mother believes murdered her son.
Kezman points out “officer disciplinary records are not available to the public,” but she contends that Giese, a Marine veteran, was “charged with civil federal suits for three different disciplinary events,” and “was named in nine excessive use of force incidents in 10 years.” The co-director adds that Giese was never found guilty of any of the charges, nor “held accountable or faced any discipline actions whatsoever,” although “he was promoted.”
Howell’s involvement in the making of Cycle grew out of his personal connections to the Ty’rese matter. “I was a local videographer, I did rap music in Racine and was the first person with a record deal. I was the face of our city for somebody who received opportunity to use music to further my dreams. What happened with Ty’rese made me very active, because his father and I grew up together.”
However, Howell, whose rapper handle is “Mr. Wicked,” has an even more intimate, startling tie to the controversy. “My uncle [Art Howell] was chief of police in Racine at the time…He was in charge of the investigation. Initially, it would be up to him to send in a report to the DA,” which did not lead to pressing charges against Giese. “From a responsibility standpoint, even to right now, he’s never ever talked to Ty’rese’s family or the community,” the filmmaker says.
William says his role as a filmmaker fractured his relationship with his uncle. “It did the ultimate damage. There’s nothing reparable there.” Worse, it harmed his relationship with his grandmother, with whom he’d been close.
The compelling Cycle has lots of nitty gritty camerawork, but is also cinematically stylish, featuring a leitmotif of closeups of a bicycle wheel emblazoned with different words such as “Silence,” that refer to the systemic cyclical process related to what occurs in cases of purported police excessive use of force. Cycle is making the rounds of the film fest circuit, winning the Cream City Cinema Jury Award at the Milwaukee Film Festival and the Best Feature Documentary at the Brooklyn Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best First Feature at the Pan African Film Festival. Filmmakers Laura Dyan Kezman and William Howell will be present at the WFF for an after-screening Q & A.
Editor's note: This post has been updated to correct the spelling of Giese in one reference.
