Wednesday, January 11, 2012

L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy Strikes Special Needs Woman On Metro Bus

Photos from Green's cell phone videotape.

Videotape shows L.A. County Sheriff deputy striking special needs woman after she cursed him and told him he was being a big shot.

By H. Nelson Goodson
January 11, 2012

Los Angeles - On Wednesday,  Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office (LACSO) spokesman Steve Whitmore told NBCLA News 4 that the person involved on Monday's bus route incident with several deputies was a homeless woman. She is currently going a 72-hour psychiatric hold and has four prior convictions for assaulting police officers, according to Whitmore.
Deputies were responding to "911" call that an elderly passenger was almost attacked inside the bus by a "violent woman," Whitmore told NBCLA that the call might have come from someone inside the bus. Photos taken by the Metro bus surveillance camera were recovered and turned over to the LACSO, but were not released to the media due to the ongoing investigation.
L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca confirmed that it was to his understanding that the woman was homeless and suffers from a mental illness, according to NBCLA.
The new information was released by the LACSO after a videotape of the incident was shown in the main stream media throughout the U.S. depicting a deputy striking a woman.
On Tuesday, the sheriff's office had refused to comment and was not interested in looking at the videotape showing one of its deputies striking a woman with special needs inside a bus. Whitmore did indicate, that they do investigate the use of force complaints. But for the LACSO refusal to review a videotape of what transpired is questionable.
The abusive incident occured on Monday and was videotaped by Jermaine Green who got into the Metro Bellflower bus route with his fiancee Violet Roberts. Green noticed a woman getting into the bus with a stroller with some pillows and said hi to people. She seemed friendly to people, according to Green.
On the next stop, several L.A. Sheriff deputies got into the bus. One was a female deputy and the other was male deputy who went directly to the woman with the pillows. They called her by name and told her to get off the bus. The woman began to curse at them and then told the male deputy that he was being a big shot. The male deputy, despite noticing the he was being videotaped by Green's cell phone, suddenly struck the special needs woman, according to Green.
Afterwards, the male deputy tried to confiscate Green's phone. Green refused to turn it over to the deputy. The deputy then threaten Green that he could get arrested, if he refused to turn over the cell phone and then asked Green if he had any warrants. Green told the deputy, that he didn't have any warrants and that he was a war veteran. Green recently finished six years of tour duty in the Army and had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Green believed the deputy wanted to confiscate the videotape to try and coverup the incident.

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