A California cop who did not appreciate a pair of women recording him ended up following them home, pulling out the driver and abusing her.
The woman’s friend recorded the altercation and posted the video on Facebook, where it’s now going viral.
The video lasts almost four minutes showing Chico police officer Steve Dyke grabbing the 19-year-old driver by the wrist and twisting it, causing her to cry out in pain.
Reacting to the pain, Nicole Braham takes a couple of steps away from him, which prompts him to order her to stop resisting.
She then falls and Dyke, still holding on to her wrist, orders he to lie down on her stomach.
Meanwhile, Braham’s two friends repeatedly ask what they had done wrong as more cops pull up to the scene.
At one point, Dyke orders the cops to arrest Braham’s friend, Madeline Hemphill, 21, who was one of the women who had been recording him earlier.
And even though the women repeatedly ask throughout the almost four minute video why he had pulled them over, he doesn’t answer that question until the very end of the video.
“I was pulling her over for a traffic violation and she refused to comply,” Dyke replies in the cheerful, arrogant tone of a bully who gets off on preying on the weak.
“What did she do wrong?” the woman asks.
“She had a light out …. in her back.”
“My light is out?” the woman asks in disbelief, who apparently is the owner of the car.
“Yeah, you have a license plate out.”
This is how Genna Little, who is roommates with the women in the video, described it on [__Facebook:__](https://www.facebook.com/genna.little.3/videos/10153886166891476/)
> My roommates were victim of police brutality last night in Chico, CA. They were sober and outside her home. The officer abused them, both verbally and physically, and then sent her to jail for a “broken tail light” that wasn’t broken at all. It’s one thing to see this on the news but it’s another to have it happen to people that you’re close to. This officer MUST have his badge removed at all costs. If ANYONE knows of a good lawyer/a way for my friend to receive legal aid I would be so incredibly appreciative. Also sharing this video and making it go viral would help enormously. Seriously, just a share is all I need. Please help.
Chico police [__posted their own statement__](https://www.facebook.com/ChicoPoliceDepartment/posts/10153829640321439) on Facebook saying they were only trying to keep everybody safe, but in the process, had to arrest both Braham and Hemphill for Penal Code 148, resisting arrest, which is California’s contempt of cop charge.
The police press release says that Hemphill’s phone was lost during the melee, which incidentally, contains footage of the DUI traffic stop they were recording earlier where police claim she had been standing in the middle of the street in violation of the law.
Dyke made the [__local news__](https://www.newsreview.com/chico/put-your-hands-up/content?oid=9764287) in 2013 when he pulled over a man named Tom Steele on his way home, then pulled out a gun on him, only to put the gun away when realizing he had mistaken the vehicle for a stolen car.
> Steele rolled down his window, turned off the ignition, placed his hands on the steering wheel and waited for the officer to approach, just as he’d learned to do in traffic school.
> Suddenly the officer yelled, “Put your hands up!” Steele looked in his outside mirrors and saw that the officer—later identified as Stephen Dyke—had assumed a shooting stance about seven feet behind him, his Glock aimed at Steele’s head. As Steele later wrote, Dyke “was looking down his barrel at the back of my head. I realized that he had lined up a kill shot on this AARP member in good standing, execution style, right here on the streets of Chico, three blocks from lunch.”
> Steele was “terrified, traumatized, and sent into a state of shock,” he wrote.
> Then Officer Dyke got a call on his radio, holstered his weapon and approached Steele’s window. It was an error, he said; dispatch had mistaken his car for a stolen vehicle. There have been a lot of car thefts lately, he said. He didn’t apologize.
> Steele, feeling shattered, drove home and canceled his afternoon appointments. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, put on meds and spent four months in therapy.
We imagine Braham, the 19-year-old woman in this video, will have to undergo her own recovery from the traumatic experience.
**UPDATE:** The local media [__interviewed both the police chief and the two women,__](http://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/students-speak-out-about-incident-with-police/) concluding that if the women had only complied, none of this would have happened.
However, no mention was made of how Dyke decided to pull the women over after he spotted them recording another traffic stop. And no mention was made of the missing phone, which Hemphill was using to record the incident, before she was tackled into some bushes and arrested.
