A woman filed a lawsuit last week against the Baltimore City Police Department claiming that she was Tasered and arrested in March for filming a man's arrest.
According to Ars Technica, 36-year-old Kianga Mwamba was driving home on March 30 when she saw police arresting and allegedly kicking 27-year-old Cordell Bruce. When police realized that Mwamba was recording them, they ordered her to stop:
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.
After Tasering Mwamba, an officer calls her a "dumb bitch" and accuses her of trying to run over a police officer. She was arrested, but the charges for trying to run an officer down were dropped. Ars Technica adds that when Mwamba gave an officer her phone to show that she didn't try to run anyone over, the video was deleted. However, her attorneys were able to retrieve it because it was uploaded to the cloud.
The lawsuit seeks $7 million in damages. Though the police department said the video "does not capture enough information to draw definitive conclusions about what transpired before, during, and after the arrest," it noted that "the language used [by officers] is unacceptable and will not be tolerated."
[via Ars Technica]
