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A 36-year-old Baltimore woman claims she was tased by police and arrested while filming the arrest of a man with her mobile phone, according to a lawsuit to be served on the Baltimore City Police Department as early as Thursday.
Video of the March 30 melee surfaced online this week. Police erased the 135-second recording from the woman's phone, but it was recovered from her cloud account*, according to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City lawsuit (PDF), which seeks $7 million.
Kianga Mwamba was driving home from a family gathering in March. Stopped in traffic, she began filming the nearby arrest of a man who she says was kicked by police.
"You telling me I can't record," the woman says on the video as police tell her to move on.
"I'll park. I'll park. I'll park," the woman is heard saying in her own recording.
All of a sudden an officer says, "Out of the car. Out of the car."
She was yanked out. "He burning me. He burning me," the woman is heard screaming.
What a bunch of absolute scum buckets.
The suit says the officers arrested Mwamba and "threw her face-down on the street" to "prevent the disclosure of the video taken of them beating a handcuffed man."
That handcuffed man was 27-year-old Cordell Bruce, who faces assault charges on allegations of striking an officer outside a nightclub—charges Bruce denies. The video does not capture him being beaten by police.
I have long held a strong distrust of the police in my own country and see nothing to make me think the US version are any better so it's probably no surprise that I read that and thought:
"Yes, he no doubt assaulted the officer by aggressively placing his face in the way of the officer's swiftly descending nightstick/fist/boot/taser."
Of course, this could all have been taken out of context and spurious.
Either way, I'm sure the officers will be absolved of any guilt.
They always are.
*This part made me smile. Bet the heavy-handed arseholes didn't think of that.