A daughter of a police officer who slowed her car down to record police kicking a man on the side of the road was violently yanked out of her car, tased, called a “dumb bitch” and handcuffed after they accused her of striking officers with her car.
Baltimore police then deleted her footage while they jailed her on charges of assaulting two officers.
But those charges were dropped after she discovered the footage was saved on a cloud app.
The video was posted to Youtube Monday by her attorney, who also filed a $7 million lawsuit last week. The incident took place in March and her charges weren’t dropped until five months later.
Kianga Mwamba, the daughter of a Maryland Capital police officer, might not receive $7 million from the cash-strapped city, but she certainly deserves a huge payout. If she can sue them for so much where the department is forced to shut down, it might not be a bad thing, but that is just wishful thinking.
The video reveals the very disgusting side of police when they turn into aggressive, intimidating, lying, abusive, bullying thugs, for lack of better word.
The video begins with Mwamba recording out of her car, capturing a handcuffed man in a sitting position as cops stand around him. Nothing dramatic, but she said the main reason she started recording was because the cops had kicked the suspect.
They eventually spot her and tell her to move on. She asserts her right to record and informs them that she will park her car, letting them know she wasn’t going to stop recording.
That was when they bum-rushed her, surrounding her car while ordering her to drive away, but making it impossible for her to drive away.
The camera is pointed upwards and doesn’t show the scene but the drama and tension and intimidation and thuggish acts under the color of law were captured perfectly on audio.
According to the Baltimore Sun:
Mwamba’s video does not capture the entire scene, and after she stopped her car and began filming an officer told her keep moving once a stoplight turned green.
“All right, I’ll park, I’ll park,” Mwamba tells the officers.
Multiple officers can be heard telling Mwamba to get out of the street but as she tries to pull over, Mwamba says she cannot get out of the road because there are officers blocking the way.
“How can I pull my car over right here when the police is right here?” Mwamba says, according to the video.
Then, a minute and 23 seconds after Mwamba began filming, things appear to start spiraling out of control. The video does not show what happened but shouting and the sound of banging can be heard outside the car and Mwamba says, “Why would you do that?”
Officer Stephanie Uruchima wrote in a report that Mwamba had accelerated and hit Officer Kari Larson in the legs, knocking her back. Mwamba denies that she tried to hit Larson.
Uruchima then described an orderly process of trying to remove Mwamba from the car, but on the video it appears as though officers rush forward and they can be heard using a Taser, which has a distinctive clicking sound.
After the metallic sound of handcuffs going on, a male voice can be heard saying “You’re a dumb bitch, do you know that?”
“What did I do?” Mwamba asks.
“You just tried to run over an officer,” the same male voice says. After that the video cuts out.
But the video shows the car was not moving and it captures her saying she can’t move because the cops are in the way. Then a loud thud is heard and that is when they force her out of her car like a gang of carjackers turned kidnappers.
We can assume an officer banged on the car, claiming to be hit, in order to justify their unjustifiable behavior.
The Baltimore Police Department, which gave the usual “it’s under investigation” brush-off, has a sordid history of abusing the rights of citizens to record them in public, prompting the Department of Justice to issue these set of guidelines in 2012 to teach them the law.
But they obviously haven’t learned a thing other that they can get away with anything.
