An Arizona police officer punched a 15 year girl in the face knocking her down to the ground in Mesa Arizona Friday Dec. 5, 2014. A man and a woman caught the incident on camera from their car at a street corner where the incident occurred. The figures are in the distance, but the video clearly captures a struggle between the female officer and the girl, ending with the officer pinning the girl to the ground. The female officer continued to roughly subdue the girl even after the teen’s mother begged the female cop to stop saying that the girl is asthmatic and has emotional issues.
As teen's legs kicked and flailed, the girl told the officers she couldn’t breathe, screaming, “Stop!” over and over, but they continued to pin her against the pavement with force. In my observation of the video the girl had enough air in her lungs to continually scream at the top her lungs "I can't breathe" so she should not have used that statement in vain. The second officer said that everything his comrade did was according to police procedure and that if she was wanted the officer “could have shot her dead.” Really? ...
The mother of the teen had actually called the police for help but this isn't the kind of help the mom was expecting. The teen was a runaway but that's no excuse for the "overkill" behavior by police. Creating further injury is not helping.
Police told ABC News 15 in Arizona that the girl had run away in the past, and that her mother had called the police asking for help after the girl got out of the mother’s car and walked away. Esteban Flores, with the Mesa Police Department, told the news outlet that “authorities tried three times to convince the girl to stop before a female officer reached for the girl’s arm.” According to the police, the girl then kicked the officer and “punched her in the face.” After that, the female officer — a 12-year veteran on the force, according to Esteban — made the arrest, “which involved physical force by the officer.”
Insolent Politics.
Sources: Thinkprogress.org , Rawstory.com ,
As teen's legs kicked and flailed, the girl told the officers she couldn’t breathe, screaming, “Stop!” over and over, but they continued to pin her against the pavement with force. In my observation of the video the girl had enough air in her lungs to continually scream at the top her lungs "I can't breathe" so she should not have used that statement in vain. The second officer said that everything his comrade did was according to police procedure and that if she was wanted the officer “could have shot her dead.” Really? ...
The mother of the teen had actually called the police for help but this isn't the kind of help the mom was expecting. The teen was a runaway but that's no excuse for the "overkill" behavior by police. Creating further injury is not helping.
Police told ABC News 15 in Arizona that the girl had run away in the past, and that her mother had called the police asking for help after the girl got out of the mother’s car and walked away. Esteban Flores, with the Mesa Police Department, told the news outlet that “authorities tried three times to convince the girl to stop before a female officer reached for the girl’s arm.” According to the police, the girl then kicked the officer and “punched her in the face.” After that, the female officer — a 12-year veteran on the force, according to Esteban — made the arrest, “which involved physical force by the officer.”
Insolent Politics.
Sources: Thinkprogress.org , Rawstory.com ,
