GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Campus police arrested a University of Florida history senior inside a classroom building Wednesday after he was accused of stealing two large televisions from another UF building in August.
A video of Wednesday’s arrest showed at least four uniformed officers holding down Tyler Anthony Brown, 29, of Miami, in the Keene-Flint Hall classroom building as a fifth officer in plain clothes watched. The building houses UF’s history department.
It is highly unusual for police to arrest a student inside a classroom building in the middle of a weekday, when classes are usually full. The video circulated across social media platforms Wednesday afternoon.
Mitchell Hart, a UF history professor, said Brown entered his ‘history of race’ lecture late. A plainclothes officer entered the classroom shortly after, and motioned Brown out, he said.
“We could see the student on the ground,” he said. “All I heard was ‘Don’t resist. Stop resisting.”
Hart said his students were visibly shaking and shocked, and he dismissed his class. It was the first time a situation like this had ever happened to him, he said.
Once Brown was escorted out, students from classrooms around the scene flooded the hall, Hart said. Nobody within the UF history administration department was made aware of the situation beforehand, Hart said.
Brown was in the Alachua County Jail late Wednesday, facing a new misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest without violence and older charges of larceny, burglary and failing to appear in court.
Brown had faced a felony theft charge after he stole an 85-inch TV in May from the student lounge of Midtown Apartments, where police said he was subletting a room without permission from apartment managers. A police officer arrested him in June outside a convenience store, where the officer said Brown tried to run away.
Under a plea deal Aug. 12, prosecutors said they would withhold adjudication in that case if Brown didn’t break the law again for 12 months.
Just four days later, Brown was spotted on surveillance cameras sneaking into the Computer Sciences and Engineering Building before 3 a.m. and carrying out two large TVs, university police said. An investigator showed the video to Brown’s ex-girlfriend, who said she was “5,000% positive” it was Brown who carried the televisions out of the building.
Prosecutors re-opened the earlier theft case in September and issued an arrest warrant for Brown in October. It wasn’t clear why it took police more than four months to find Brown to arrest him.
A court notice mailed to Brown at his permanent address in Miami was returned as undeliverable, so it wasn’t clear where he was living.
UF Spokeswoman Cynthia Roldan said police arrested Brown in the classroom building Wednesday because he had evaded another attempted arrest a day earlier. The university also banned Brown from being anywhere on campus for at least three years.
Brown was enrolled in the current spring semester as a senior history major, and listed his only address as the same permanent address in Miami where the court document couldn’t be delivered, according to the school’s registrar records. He was not enrolled as a student during the fall semester last year, those records showed.
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