Baltimore Woman Arrested on False Felony Charges Has Police Misconduct on Video to Back Up Her Claim
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| In the wake of the grand jury verdicts over the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, in which officers were found not guilty, another case out of Baltimore, MD, has surfaced over a video recorded by a woman during a man’s arrest on the street back on March 30, 2014.
Kianga Mwamba, 36, began recording video on her cell phone after seeing a man getting arrested and potentially mistreated by Baltimore City police. Because Mwamba was behind the wheel of her car, she was told by officers that she could film — which is her legal right — but she had to find a place to park. On the video, Mwamba is seen attempting to move the car but had been blocked in by another police car. Although she was willing to move but unable to do so, an officer approaches her vehicle. The officer in the video then repeatedly orders Mwamba to “Get out of the f***ing car,” and although not seen on camera, the sound of a Taser can be heard over the commotion. Upon restraining Mwamba, the same officer is heard telling her, “You’re a dumb b*tch, you know that?” Mwamba was then arrested and charged with trying to strike an officer with her vehicle — a felony charge that was later dropped after she and her criminal law attorney disputed it. Police then took Mwamba’s phone and deleted the video. Fortunately, Mwamba’s daughter was able to recover the deleted video from the cloud storage DropBox it was sent to. The video was uploaded this past week onto YouTube by Mwamba’s attorney as evidence. The officer filed a probable cause report and said that Mwamba, who is the daughter of a capitol police officer, refused to get out of the car and had struck another police officer with her vehicle, a claim that is not evident in the video. The Baltimore Police Department released a statement to reporters, saying that although the video mostly captures the sound from the event rather than the visuals, the language in the video was “both offensive and unacceptable.” “The Baltimore police department expects and demands that officers treat every citizen with respect regardless of the situation,” said the statement to WJZ News in Baltimore. Meanwhile, the arresting officer, who has not been named, is still on the job. The incident left Mwamba with cuts, bruises, a severe sprain after the officer allegedly slammed on the ground, and emotional scars since her arrest. But Mwamba continues to search for justice. “I want him to be charged, and I want him to understand what he did to me was wrong,” she told reporters. |
