Ty’rese West grew up in Racine, where his family had lived for generations. At 18 years old, he was the spitting image of his father. He loved riding his bike for long stretches, especially to visit friends, which is what he was doing in the early morning hours of June 15, 2019.
West was stopped by Mount Pleasant patrol Sgt. Eric Giese for allegedly not having a light on his bike. Ty’rese ran, and when Sgt. Giese caught up with the teen, he shot him twice in the head. The shooting occurred at 1:33 a.m. — the morning of Racine's Juneteenth celebration.
What happened in the lead-up and aftermath of Ty’Rese’s death is the subject of a new documentary called CYCLE. The film premiered earlier this year at the Milwaukee Film Festival, and will be showing at Park High School in Racine this Saturday.
Ahead of that, co-directors William Howell and Laura Dyan Kezman join Lake Effect’s Joy Powers.
"It took about 16 to 17 hours for the family — Monique West and Ty'Rese's siblings — to be notified that Tyrese was deceased," Kezman says. "[In the interim] he was misidentified by the Mount Pleasant and Racine Police departments and they informed the wrong family that their son was murdered."
After Monique West was finally informed hours later, she made the decision to publish the photo of her son's wounds.
"The first thing that crossed her mind was Emmett Till, and she wanted the world to see what this man had done to her son," Kezman says. "Ty'Rese is an example of this broader cycle of police violence that is well documented and well known, that goes back decades, generations, centuries in this country."
As CYCLE explores, Sgt. Giese's body camera was turned off, his dashboard camera was not functioning and the shooting was not captured on CCTV from buildings in the surrounding business park. In the absence of witnesses or video evidence, District Attorney Patricia Hanson did not file charges against Giese. The West family did file a civil suit, however, and received a financial settlement from Mount Pleasant in 2023.
Using exclusive court footage of Sergeant Giese's deposition, the film highlights various logical inconsistencies in the officer's testimony and calls into question his justification for using lethal force.
"[Giese] was given the benefit of the doubt, really without any scrutiny in terms of the sequence of events that led to him making the decision to kill Tyrese," Kezman says.
CYCLE's directors say West's death didn't receive the viral attention and national coverage his family deserved — which became a motivating factor for making the film.
"With Ty'Rese, like, it's such a a shock effect there, not only because the story and the inconsistencies and how this happened, but because you're looking at a kid," says Howell.
During the four years Kezman spent editing the film, she battled doubts about its potential impact — especially as the 2020 George Floyd protests faded from view.
"The Black Lives Matter signs come off the windows and the streets are quiet and you know that these incidents are still happening with just as much regularity," she says. "But it's harder and harder to keep people's attention, and so a fear set in...are people even going to care anymore when this comes out?"
Although CYCLE came from a place of pain and anger, Kezman says it ends on a hopeful note.
"You can feel the emotion and the rage and everything that carried this film to a point, and then all of the sudden it ends with this proclamation of love and understanding — and as an invitation for people to...recognize that the cycles that we have control of breaking are the ones within ourselves first and foremost," she says.
There will be a showing of the documentary this Saturday, July 19 at 1:00 p.m. in the John Burns Theater at Park High School in Racine.
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