Lawsuit: Baltimore Police Taser Woman Videotaping Them In Public and Then Erase The Videotape On Her Cellphone And Arrest Her On Later Dropped Charges

There is another disturbing video of a citizen being arrested after trying to videotape police in public. Kianga Mwamba, 36, says that she was tased by police and arrested after she tried to film the arrest of a man with her mobile phone. The police took her phone, deleted the video, and arrested her. The video was later recovered from the cloud and shows an officer telling her at the end: “You a dumb bitch, you know that?” She was charged with the serious crime of trying to run over a police officer, but those charges were later dropped. However, no charged or discipline have been brought against the officer.

We have been following the continuing abuse of citizens who are detained or arrested for filming police in public. (For prior columns, click here and here). Despite consistent rulings upholding the right of citizens to film police in public, these abuses continue.

The March 30th encounter is now the subject of a lawsuit against the Baltimore City Police Department, a department that has been the subject of repeated and ongoing claims of police abuse.

In the complaint below, Mwamba says that she was told to move her car but could not because there were police officers around it and then without warning she was dragged from the car and tased. She said that when she asked for her inhaler, officers laughed at her.

She said that she showed her video to an officer at booking to show that she did not try to run over any officers but that someone then deleted the video. There is not simply the allegation of an assault on a citizen but the possible use of false charges against the victim of police abuse. However, the department now insists that, even with the recovered evidence, “The video does not capture enough information to draw definitive conclusions about what transpired before, during, and after the arrest.”

The complaint names officers Stepanie Uruchima, Kelly Larson, Erick Jackson, and Marlon Koushall.

Here is a copy of the lawsuit: Baltimore Complaint

Source: Baltimore Sun