BodyCam video shows Barstow police slamming a 8-month pregnant black woman to the ground for refusing to provider her identification following road rage despite in a parking lot.
Caution: Trigger Warning for those who who've experienced police or domestic violence.
Details Via Raw Story.
Extended analysis over the flip.
At the time Officers arrive the key despite is over, which seems to be about whether there are two lanes or just one lane available for cars attempted to park. While dropping of her daughter at the Elementary School Michelle, the pregnant woman, gets into a argument with one woman, who is white and works at the school. They first talk to the white woman who is very distraught and accuses the other woman of "acting crazy", hitting her window and throwing things at her car. Officers listen and then tell her "no crime has been commited" before finding Michelle who is standing a few yards away and tells a quite different story that it was the white woman who was screaming and honking at her, while scaring her 2nd grade daughter. She says she responded back verbally with "why are you talking to me this way, as if I'm a child", then took her own daughter into the school and then returned, despite the claim that she threw anything.
“She called the police for whatever reason, I don’t know,” Cooks says. “Should I feel threatened by her because she’s white? Because she’s white and she’s making threats to me?”
Officers listen then ask her who she is. She says quite simply that her first name is Michelle and that she doesn't have to tell them who she is. They disagree.
"I actually do have the right to ask you for your name,” the officer replies.
“Let me make sure,” Cooks says as she makes a phone call to someone.
The Officer says he's give her "two minutes".
But less then thirty seconds later as she attempts to step away for her phone call he and his partner begin grabbing her arms ultimately forcing her down onto her belly immediately after she screams at them that's she's pregnant.
“Why are you resisting?” the officer demands.
“Please! I’m pregnant!” Cooks exclaims. “Please, stop this!”
She is ultimately placed under arrest for "Obstruction". It should be noticed that Officers never asked, let alone demanded to know the ID of the White Woman that Michelle (later ID'd as Charlena Michelle Cooks) had the despite with. Now this may be because they already knew it because of the 9-1-1 call, or not, but either way the matter in which each is treated, and
expects to be treated is very different.
ACLU SoCal staff attorney Adrienna Wong pointed out that Cooks had a right to refuse to show her ID.
“It would be a wrongful arrest, but it would be an arrest,” she noted. “Even if an officer is conducting an investigation, in California, unlike some other states, he can’t just require a person to provide ID for no reason.”
“Officers in California should not be using the obstruction law, Penal Code 148, to arrest someone for failing to provide ID, when they can’t find any other reason to arrest them,” Wong added.
Penal Code 148 is the Obstruction Statute even though California Peace Officers Legal Sourcebook specifically notes that "
failure to identify oneself does not constitute a violation of California Penal Code §148(a)(1), resisting, delaying, or obstructing a peace officer" this doesn't seem to be something that police,
certainly not LAPD or their Protective League are well informed of as we previously saw with the
temporary detention of actress Danielle Watts some months ago by LAPD who was threatened with arrest for supposedly violating the same penal code.
And this wasn't the first time that Barstow police had discovered this the hard way.
In a separate settlement with ACLU SoCal, the City of Barstow agreed to provide training to its officers after two brothers were arrested for refusing to provide identification. Charges against the brothers were dropped and the city agreed to pay $30,000 in damages.
The charges of resisting arrest against Cooks were also dropped, but the city insisted that it acted properly in that case.
“The Barstow Police Department continues to be proactive in training its officers to assess and handle interactions with emotionally charged individuals while conducting an investigation, for the protection of everyone involved,” the city said in a statement.
This of course sounds more like an attempt to dodge civil liability by the city and ignores that fact that Cooks was perfectly lucid and calm, even matter-of-fact, for more calm than her accuser up until the point that
Officers laid hands on her.
To add insult to injury Cooks was actually banned from the school while charges were pending.
"I received a letter saying I was a threat to the campus and employees." Cooks said. "I was pretty much told my children were welcomed there but I was not. I used to go have breakfast with my daughter on campus but that was taken from me for something that was not my fault."
So Cooks is the threat for implementing her constitutional right under the fourth amendment against unlawful search and seizure
without probable cause for which she was
Illegally and unlawfully arrested and brutalized while pregnant? And she not only had to suffer potential harm to herself and her child but this additional indignation as well?
This not only took away her freedom and her dignity, it took away her peace of mind and sense of safety in this town.
"I'm still trying to process everything and get in a good state of mind," she said. "I'm in a very fearful state of mind. Barstow is so small and I used to be comfortable living here. Not anymore. I really felt like after all that happened I had some of my everyday freedoms taken from me."
Her daughter was born on March 30th and appears to be healthy at least so far.
"She was a full-term baby born on March 30," Cooks said. "We don't exactly know if anything really happened to her during the incident so I'm just watching her development closely."
Cooks has, to date, not decided whether she will sue and is more interested in simply moving away and re-establishing the sense of safety and trust in the police that she's now lost, and may frankly never completely regain. But IMO the sad truth is that the feeling of safety from unwarranted police violence she previously had may have ultimately been little more than an illusion, regardless of the city in which she resides, in the first place.