San Jose police officer seen dragging and kicking a woman

SAN JOSE – Video of an eyewitness to a San José police officer kicking, dragging, and arresting a woman in the McDonald’s parking lot appeared this week in an incident that sparked an internal overhaul amid renewed scrutiny of the use of force on the part of the department.

The one-minute-long cell phone video, recorded Wednesday afternoon by San Jose resident Josh Gil, who witnessed the incident, shows a woman sitting outside a silver car while a police officer is just moments away. meters away. In a few seconds, the officer appears to launch himself at the woman and kick her aside, sending her face down on the pavement, before handcuffing her.

He then drags her several feet across the floor to her unmarked police SUV. The footage ends when the woman leans upright against the patrol car, her hands behind her back.

Obediently, however, he kicked her while she was on the ground and then continued to hit her and then DRAG her ???? THIS WAS AT MCDONALDS IN SANTA CLARA IN SAN JOSE !!!!! pic.twitter.com/F0kywklXK5

– Diannee 🌻 (@__dianeedun) July 23, 2020

“It was nothing like he was trying to run or something; he was already on his knees, there wasn’t much he could have done,” Jonathan Gastelum, another witness to the incident, said Friday.

Gastelum, a San Jose resident, said he stopped in the McDonald’s parking lot at 28th and Santa Clara streets as the encounter unfolded, and saw the officer drag the woman down the sidewalk, yelling “Shut up” and “I told you “Then.” Meanwhile, a second officer appeared to have his gun trained on the woman’s vehicle, where two children sat inside crying while another woman shouted that “they just bought the car.”

In an initial summary of the encounter, police wrote that the woman was arrested without incident. But Gastelum said that is not how it appeared.

“It was a terrifying situation for everyone,” said Gastelum. “It was just, it was just bad.”

The video was shared on social media Thursday afternoon, after Gil sent it to his friends, and was first reported in the San José Spotlight. By Friday, it had been viewed more than 9,000 times.

“No boy should have to see his mother put up with that kind of brutality, you know?” Gil told this news organization. Even if he was guilty of the crime they suspected she was committing, there was no reason for them to use excessive force while she was serving. There is absolutely no reason for that.

San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia said Friday that an internal review of the incident was already underway when the video appeared on social media. The officer, who the police did not identify, was placed on administrative leave.

“I understand the scrutiny we are going to receive when these types of videos go viral. We are not going to escape that, ”said García. “But what you’re looking at is a little clip of a larger situation.”

Garcia said police had searched for the silver car for a week, after officers tried to stop it for an expired search on July 18 and its driver fled. That led the police to obtain an order to capture the car; when officers tried to stop him on July 21, he walked away again. Officers re-viewed the car Wednesday and staged a traffic stop, leading to the encounter in the McDonald’s parking lot.

“A vehicle takes off from the police twice, there are people in the car and the officers do not know what is happening. People don’t run away from the police for no reason, “he said. “That said, I fully understand the sensitivity and scrutiny here. We are looking at the force that was used and analyzing it.”

The woman seen in the video was booked into the Santa Clara County Jail for driving with a suspended license, possession of paraphernalia, and resistance to arrest.