VIDEO: Shock surveillance video shows LAPD officers body-slamming ‘Defenceless woman’ into the pavement during violent arrest

August 31, 2012

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Source: The Blaze

A startling video that is making its rounds shows two Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers snatching a female driver and violently slamming her body into the ground — twice. The woman’s alleged offense? Talking on her cell phone while driving and, subsequently, resisting arrest. As a result of the trauma, Michelle Jordan, 34, sustained intensive bruising and other related blemishes and injuries.

The incident unfolded after the registered nurse and mother was apparently seen by authorities using her phone while operating her vehicle — an action that is banned by law in the State of California. Officers followed her car into the parking lot of a Del Taco restaurant in Tujunga, California, on August 21, where the arrest then took place. The entire incident, according to the Daily Mail, was captured on surveillance video.

Jordan, who is 5-feet 4-inches, apparently didn‘t listen to officers’ commands (or so say officials looking into the matter). After she got out of her vehicle, she purportedly was told to get back inside. When she refused, the male officers slammed Jordan onto the ground and then handcuffed her. But the bizarre incident didn’t end there. She was then slammed again into the ground.

Despite a failure to purportedly listen to officers’ commands, Police Chief Charlie Beck issued a statement earlier this week claiming that he has “serious concerns” about how the scenario was handled. He pledged to investigate the force used and to “hold…officers accountable for their actions.”

The woman’s lawyer, Sy Nazif, told The Los Angeles Times via e-mail that the officers should be prosecuted and that his client was a “defenseless woman” who was bashed into the ground without reason.

“If a civilian were to assault a woman in this manner, he would go to jail,” Nazif wrote. “These officers must be held to the same standard. They have to be held accountable.”

“We have a defenseless woman in a sundress, two fully armed police officers with training in various restraining devices that they could have used, and instead they used brutal force to take a woman down to the ground for no reason,” added Arthur Corona, another one of Jordan’s attorneys.

Raymond Branch, a witness who was outside of the Del Taco restaurant when the situation unfolded, said that he was surprised by the use of force. While he claims the arrest was warranted, the violence, in his view, was not.

“The first part, I believe they had a right to arrest her for resisting, but the second part was overboard,” he explained.

Even Nazif admits that the woman made some “unwise moves,” but the force used against her, he contends, simply wasn’t warranted. A police investigation into the matter is in its preliminary stages