By David Edwards, May 27, 2015, RawStory.com
Officials with the city of Barstow, California insisted this week that officers had acted properly when they used force to arrest a pregnant woman who refused to show them her identification, even though the charges were later dismissed.
In police body camera video obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal), an officer is responding to an apparent traffic dispute between Charlena Michelle Cooks, who is 8 months pregnant and black, and an unidentified white woman.
The officer first talks to the white woman, who accuses Cooks of acting “all crazy.”
“I don’t see a crime that has been committed,” the officer admits after examining the woman’s car. After promising the woman a police report, the officer heads over to talk to Cooks.
The cops caused the escalation when they insisted on illegally identifying the woman, using force to effect it, after they said on their on recording they didn't think a crime had been committed.
ReplyDeleteThese cops should be suspended and have a letter placed in their file, although my emotional reaction is that they should have been beaten by the community—to do this to a pregnant woman who had committed no crime.