(Newswire.net — December 12, 2014) Baltimore, MD — A 36-year-old Baltimore woman claims she was brutally pulled out of her car by police and assaulted with the Taser, because she was videotaping the arrest of another man with her mobile phone. The recorder on the phone was still on, capturing audio of the whole event. The woman filed $7 million lawsuit against Baltimore police, while the recording went viral on the Internet.
The police officer tried to eliminate the evidence by erasing the 135-second recording from the woman’s phone; however, it was recovered from her cloud account, according to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City lawsuit (PDF).
Kianga Mwamba was driving home from a family gathering when she saw police officers arresting a man. She pulled out her phone and started recording the incident because the cops, allegedly were kicking the suspect while he was on the ground. Suddenly, one officer spotted her and commanded her to stop recording and to move on. As she lowered the phone the recorded audio illustrates what went on.
“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.
At the end of the tape, an officer says, “You a dumb b****, you know that?”
“What did I do?” she asks.
“You just tried to run over an officer,” the officer responds.
Mwamba was arrested on charges of assault for allegedly trying to run over two officers. While in custody, she gave her phone to an officer to show in the video that she didn’t try to run over anybody. The charges were dropped, however, when she got her phone back the video was missing.
Mwamba’s attorney, Joshua Insley, described the missing video in a telephone interview as a “coverup,” however, the video has been restored from the cloud and presented as evidence against Baltimore police department.
“The video does not capture enough information to draw definitive conclusions about what transpired before, during, and after the arrest,” the department said. “What is clear is that the language used is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
The suit, filed last week, said the police “attacked” the woman, “dragged” her from her vehicle, and “threw her onto the street, handcuffed her, tasered her, called her a ‘dumb b****,’ and kept her restrained.”
That handcuffed man was 27-year-old Cordell Bruce, facing charges on allegations of striking an officer outside a nightclub, which he denies. The video does not shows he was kicked by the police.