Videos posted to Facebook on Friday that went viral over the weekend show a female Michigan police officer beating a handcuffed teen girl in the back of a police car.
The videos have sparked cries from the Lansing chapter of Black Lives Matter to charge Lansing police officer, Lindsey Howley, seen in the videos, with assault.
The Lansing Police Department published its body-camera footage on YouTube Saturday, showing Howley chasing a teen girl wearing a lavender top and shorts through streets and backyards, ordering her to stop running.
When Howley eventually handcuffs the girl, she breaks away, screaming.
Officer Howley restrains her and walks her back to a patrol car.
“Get in the car” Howley, carrying the teen to her vehicle, tells the teen.
“You’re hurting my arm, stupid b****” the girls yells while kicking the car door.
Officer Howley strikes the girl several times before slamming the car door as the girl tries to stop the door from shutting with her foot.
“One of our officers used a training technique, what we call a strike to the thigh…I want to also state that it is the policy of the Lansing Police Department that officers will only use force when it’s objectively reasonable,” Police Chief Mike Yankowski said during a press conference about the ordeal.
Tonia Lilly, the teen’s mother, said she was appalled after watching the video of her daughter being beaten.
“I am appalled,” she said.
“I saw the press conference . . . standard procedure? If I punched my kid like that, it would be child abuse. So I don’t see how a stranger can restrain my child by punching them.”
Lilly heard about her daughter’s arrest from a 15-year-old friend of her daughter’s.
“When she called me, you could hear my daughter screaming in the background saying they were hurting her; you could hear the neighbors saying that they were punching a child,” she told WLNS.
Police Chief Mike Yankowski place officer Howley on administrative leave pending an internal affairs investigation.
“On Saturday, June 15th, Lansing Police Chief Mike Yankowski placed Officers Lindsey Howley, a 1-year department employee, and Bailey Ueberroth, a 6 month department employee, on administrative leave while an Internal Affairs investigation is conducted regarding their actions during the arrest of a 16 year old juvenile on June 14th,” a press release stated.
“That is not the conduct of what we want from our Lansing police officers,” Chief Yankowski assured a group of protesters assembled outside of the police department on Saturday.
“That is not the outcome that we are looking for. With that being said, we’ve got to take this case from A to Z and make sure that we get all the facts and we get all the issues onto the table and we evaluate per our polices, procedures, our core values.”
Lansing Mayor Andy Schor has said allegations against the officers would be “taken very seriously,’ according to Yahoo News.