A video circulating social media of a woman being arrested in a McDonald’s parking lot has prompted the San Jose Police Department to launch an internal investigation into the officers’ potential use of excessive force and place him on administrative leave.
The minute-long video, which was captured by a bystander Wednesday afternoon, shows an officer kicking a woman before forcing her to the ground and handcuffing her hands behind her back. Once she’s in handcuffs, the officer drags then woman face-first by her arms across the pavement before pulling her up on her feet.
compliant, yet he kicked her while she was on the ground and then continued to punch her and then DRAG HER???? THIS WAS AT MCDONALDS ON SANTA CLARA IN SAN JOSE!!!!! pic.twitter.com/F0kywklXK5
— Diannee ? (@__dianeedun) July 23, 2020
Department spokesperson Sgt. Enrique Garcia told San Jose Inside that, “on Wednesday, July 22, 2020, at about 5:45pm, San Jose police officers initiated a vehicle stop on E. Santa Clara St. and N. 27th St. on a vehicle wanted for evading officers on July 18th and earlier on July 22nd.” “Officers used force during the arrest after the suspect failed to comply with their commands,” he added.
The woman has been identified as 39-year-old San Jose resident Guadalupe Esperanza Marin. Garcia said she was booked into Santa Clara County jail for driving on a suspended license, possession of paraphernalia and resisting arrest.
Garcia said the department would not be releasing the name of the officer who was placed on administrative leave at this time.
The video, which has been viewed nearly 9,000 times since it was posted to Twitter on Thursday, follows ongoing public backlash against SJPD for alleged officer misconduct during the late May and early June protests in downtown San Jose.
A representative for the San Jose Police Officers’ Association did not respond to a request for comment about the officers’ behavior.
Enrique Garcia, I know you since you were as thin as a spaghetti. You are probably one of those few SJPD officers who are not a piece of sh!t. Most of them are! If you have to arrest someone do so. There is no need for your usual excessive force! These officers should be placed on administrative work only. It takes a lot of time to obtain an accident police report. These two could support that task!
Look up Chris Rock’s advice on how to behave when stopped by an officer.
I for one have had enough of this kind of crap. I stand with the SJPD and this officer, and I am sure there are many more like me.
Even though Chief Garcia is a weaselly knee bender and should have been fired June 2106. I support the SJPD 100%. A bad cop, however, needs to get fired. It is not clear at all if this is a bad cop, due process will decide.
This is everyday stuff Sj pd are bully’s and they deserve to be investigated they pick and pick and pick on continuously harass the commiunity smh may god bless them and change their hearts
Looks like the video poster, @_Diannee should have come down off her LSD hallucination and reviewed the video before writing her comments on it. I don’t see the kicking, because there was none. I see an officer stepping over the woman who was on the ground but there was no kicking. I certainly don’t see any punching, because there was none. As far as the dragging, that looks like it happened. However, if the officer was telling the woman to stand up and was trying to pull her to her feet and she refused to stand, then she is going to be dragged, that’s simple physics unless the officer has an arm that can lift 160 pounds straight up with his elbow locked and arm fully extended. I don’t know many (if any) professional athletes or even power lifters who would be able to do that with a dumbbell, particularly if the dumbbell was kicking and squirming.
Notice that as soon as the woman got to the police car, the officer put his hand under her head, sat her up, and pulled her to her feet. That’s the proper technique, in a perfect world. I don’t know what kind of maneuvering space there was by her car initially because the camera does not show depth perception, it also does not show what happened immediately prior to the arrest; it doesn’t show whether there were real or suspected weapons and/or contraband present in or about the vehicle or on the woman but it does show that there was a second subject in the vehicle and he seemed at one point to possibly be reaching under the seat or toward the glovebox or console. The video doesn’t show the female’s level of intoxication, or her mental health or criminal history. Go to the Santa Clara County Superior Court online website and run her name. You might be surprised by the number of entries. The video doesn’t show the context of the stop but it is absolutely perfect gasoline for the anti-police narrative fire.
You cop haters want so badly for there to be police brutality in San Jose PD, probably the cleanest big city Department in the country. You must be very disappointed. It’s just eating you up inside, isn’t it?
Here’s a suggestion. Go to the drama department at San Jose State. Get some actors and dress them up as police officers. Get some professional wrestlers (small ones) or stuntmen and dress them up like “victim class people”. Stage a car stop, choreograph a “beating” of the stuntman ( the “Innocent victims”) by the actors (the “dirty cops”), complete with fake blood and any other props you want, film it and post it somewhere. Then, when the police chief gets asked about it later, and legitimately says he knows nothing about, well, there’s your cover-up and corruption. You could even teach him some stunts and make one of the “victims” Jussie Smollett. Geez, do I have to think of everything. What the hell, the chief might even fire someone just to mollify the rioters, then when the officer is reinstated after the truth comes out, you can blame the Union for preventing him from being fired!
This isn’t very bad at all….the dragging probably didn’t even scrape up her skin. Body Cam will almost certainly exonerate the officer. Most he gets is a slap on the wrist, and note in his file to make sure he doesn’t develop a habit of dragging around cuffed up citizens.
You say there wasn’t any kicking or hitting, but freely admit the video doesn’t show everything. Is it possible that the kicking and hitting preceded the video beginning? Could the kicking and hitting that preceded the video start be the reason why the video was started? Could the eye witness testimony of the kicking and hitting be used to convict a police officer of assault under color of authority? Could what is videod be used to support eye witness testimony?
As for your delusional description of staging police excessive use of force, you might want to think about the numerous examples of police being convicted of planting evidence and lying under oath. History shows the police are less than saintly.
POLL: How should the San Jose community respond to the alleged kicking of a person by SJPD officers during a police stop?
https://twitter.com/BubbleSanJose/status/1287796645883555841?s=20
Mr. Logic, I agree with all the points you made. What do you do if the video refutes the eyewitness testimony, as it seems to do here? We can speculate all we want about what happened before or after the video. As much as the camera jumped around, we can even speculate about what happened during the video. The video poster commented that there was punching and kicking. The video shows otherwise.
Believe me, you are preaching to the converted as far as acknowledging that not all (dare I say, even most) police officers are not saints, yet again, police work is not a job for a saint. Come to think of it though, regarding the saintly, didn’t “J.C.” himself fashion “a scourge of small cords” and beat the hell out of the money-changers and kick them out of the Temple? Would that be excessive force? Apparently there was no pepper spray back then and thankfully the Temple wasn’t in Seattle, Portland or Ferguson.
Police officers are the most heavily scrutinized professional. Their actions are potentially and often reviewed by peers, the public (all the out of context and bias edited video), Internal Affairs, District Attorney, State and Federal Grand Juries, State and Federal DOJ, FBI (Civil Rights Division) the media and no end of advocacy and activist groups. However, as a profession, although the process is not perfect, cops do a much better job of policing themselves and there are a lot fewer bad cops than there are bad lawyers, bad doctors, bad contractors etc. and those groups don’t get near the scrutiny. When was the last time you know of a doctor or an attorney reporting another doctor or attorney for malpractice? I’m sure it happens, just not often. As well, cops don’t get to chose the cases they take, they get sent into situations not of their own choosing where often the problem, much less the solution, is not always clear.
A person is more than 200 times more likely to be killed by a doctor’s medical malpractice than by a police officer yet I don’t see the media demanding that doctors wear bodycams or record surgery, and for every bad cop I can probably show you two or three bad attorneys, with over 1000 attorneys being disbarred every year yet we don’t complain or riot about all those “bad apples”.
> with over 1000 attorneys being disbarred every year yet we don’t complain or riot about all those “bad apples”.
In San Jose?
Or, is that for the whole county?
Entire country annually approximately 1000 attorney’s are disbarred. If it was that many in San Jose it might lead to fewer frivolous lawsuits and the terrifying possibility that people might actually be held responsible for the consequences of their own actions and stupidity and victim-hood would be seriously impacted. 99% of attorneys give the other 1% a bad name.
Scrutiny without accountability means little. Great, a “bad apple” is discovered and employment continues. That’s the problem. All of the other professions that you mention lack one specific component necessary for comparison: qualified immunity. Officer qualified immunity must be eliminated for any meaningful accountability to occur. A second component also missing with your comparison is public access to disciplinary records. The SJPD is being sued for their defiance of State law requiring disclosure. People don’t have a problem with the 1000 disbarred attorneys because they are no longer employed and their disciplinary records are a google search away. Cops, like teachers, nurses, and even contractors carry insurance to protect the public from their negligence. Cops should also have to carry insurance for their negligent acts. Currently qualified immunity effectively closes the court house to public pursuit of justice when the police and government decide to protect their own. This is the source of complaint that is so often attempted to be “papered over” with faulty comparisons such as the ones you make.
Scrutiny without accountability means little. Great, a “bad apple” is discovered and employment continues. That’s the problem. All of the other professions that you mention lack specific components necessary for comparison; one being qualified immunity. Officer qualified immunity must be eliminated for any meaningful accountability to occur. A second component also missing with your comparison is public access to disciplinary records. The SJPD is being sued for their defiance of State law requiring disclosure. People don’t have a problem with the 1000 disbarred attorneys because they are no longer employed and their disciplinary records are a google search away. Cops, like teachers, nurses, and even contractors should be required to carry insurance to protect the public from their negligence. Currently qualified immunity effectively closes the court house to public pursuit of justice when the police and government decide to protect their own. This is the source of complaint that is so often attempted to be “papered over” with faulty comparisons such as the ones you make.
Mr. Logic,
So the next time someone is stabbing you, how long do you want the suspect to continue stabbing you while the cop who responded to stop it ponders whether or not he will be personally sued for stopping it and whether or not it is even worth taking the risk of stopping you from being killed since after you are dead, the criminal might just give up and the cop won’t have to use force at all, thus eliminating the need for qualified immunity consideration? Emergency responders have qualified immunity because they have no choice regarding where they are sent and what they are required to do, when, where and under what fast breaking violent circumstances.
Qualified immunity enables cops to take immediate action based on the facts apparent “at the time of the incident” and helps inhibit unrealistic micro-examination and second-guessing that plaintiff’s attorneys so love to engage in. All that eliminating qualified immunity does is make it easier for attorney’s to sue. There are a myriad of laws that already hold cops accountable. It serves no useful purpose to take everything away from the cop and his family personally on top of everything else. Even a mediocre attorney can always find some small thing a cop did wrong in any situation. The only way to avoid being second guessed is to avoid doing anything, and even that may not be enough. Qualified immunity protects the public as much as it does the police.
Keeping personnel records confidential prevents suspects and/or advocacy groups from targeting officers and making deliberately false accusations against an officer and having this brought up in court, devoid of context or explanation. Example, in court, defense attorney might ask: “Officer, isn’t it true that you have had 20 excessive force complaints made against you in the last 12 months?” It won’t matter that all the complaints were unfounded or that they were even all made by the same person. The doubt will be there in the juries mind. Personnel record confidentiality helps protect the integrity of the system and benefits the public more than the officer.
Admit it sir, you just don’t like the police. That’s ok, but just be honest about it and stop bloviating and hiding behind a your supposed concern for police accountability.
Mr Robillard, I will openly admit I don’t care much for police. Authority usually makes bad company. I however do not see how police can do anything but investigate crimes that have already been committed without qualified immunity. Personal protection would be just that a personal responsibility, and if those who are asking to defund the police or eliminate qualified immunity were also demanding universal concealed carry for everyone over 18 years of age, I would tend to agree with them.
I still can not fathom why anyone wants to be police in these cities, not because of the risk, but the liability and the ingratitude.
Qualified immunity is great for protecting good cops and terrible for protecting bad cops. Given everything I scene, I’ve come to the opinion that it must end. Feel free to disagree. If it doesn’t work out so well, we can return to the status quo. The inability for the police to police themselves have created the need for the ignorant masses to apply their own solutions–as inelegant as they may be. All of the assertions that cops are held accountable are refuted when actual disciplinary records are revealed. Just look at NYPD’s records and how many cops remain on the job after numerous sustained abuses (and sustained means even the PD agrees with the determination). Eliminating qualified immunity does not change the definition of negligence. Doing “some small thing wrong” does not constitute legal negligence just as most Dr’s. during most surgeries also do “some small thing wrong” which does not rise to the level of malpractice. The immunity that translates into “comply or die” is simply too much protection–to the point that it encourages bad behavior. “isn’t it true in the past 12 months…” is no different than what a defendant is exposed to (even if innocent of the current charges)–not that anything but sustained allegations would ever make it into testimony, but again you know this and simply mischaracterize events.
Mr. Kulak,
I will openly admit that I don’t like the police either and I was in law enforcement for over 30 years. I found a few of the street level officers to be very honorable but there were quite a few I didn’t like working with, or personally, (and undoubtedly vice versa). The higher up the chain of command within the police Department one went, the fewer I found I liked or respected. I ended up having more respect for a street corner hooker than for any Police Chief I ever worked for because at least the prostitute was honest about it what she was doing for a living. Authority can tend to make an a-hole into a bigger a-hole and believe me, the latter is the type of “co-worker” who is the type of fellow officer who is likeliest to create a situation in police work that no one wants to be drawn into or be around when it happens. The latter is also the type who gives all cops a bad name and makes it difficult to establish rapport with the public and get the job done the way it should be. I am against “community policing”, which is nothing more than a political buzzword. A cop can establish rapport with a felon so long as both know that the other will do them extreme violence if necessary and the opportunity presents itself. As long as each knows that about the other, this mutual understanding creates a certain “street respect” and the relationship becomes somewhat utilitarian. If the last cop that felon talked to was a jackass, it makes that rapport very difficult to establish and makes the job more difficult. I hated that.
If citizens would just be allowed to “defend themselves with vigor” (I won’t say kill criminals who attempt to victimize them, that would be too insensitive) all the cops would need to do is track down the occasional crook who escapes’ and to proactively work to “wash the scum off the sidewalk” and preempt criminal activity so that a citizen doesn’t have to defend themselves in the first place. If it were up to me, if one person killed another and claimed self-defense, I would simply run the criminal record of the “decedent” and if they had a felony record, case closed. It wouldn’t matter to me if it was one dope dealer killing another dope dealer. I would classify it as a “public service homicide”.
There is nothing a criminal fears more than an armed “victim”. After Bernhard Goetz shot the muggers on the New York City subway back in 1984, robberies on the subway dropped to historic lows. While places like Seattle and Portland are being burned, looted and pillaged in the presence of armed police officers, I didn’t notice that any of the belligerent, destructive, horde of “Visigoths” were too enthusiastic about starting a fire at that house in St. Louis where the man and his wife were standing out front of their house with their guns. (That also answers the questions, “Gee whiz, why would a private citizen need a (so-called) assault rifle anyway?”) However, armed citizens would need to be trained how to interact with responding police officers , in order to avoid being mistaken for armed criminals when the cops arrive though, since the cops won’t be able to tell who is who, initially, and a taxpayer doesn’t usually stand over a dead body (criminal) while holding a gun. I would (but don’t) suggest leaving the scene, ( like Goetz did, without identifying himself), however I think in today’s society, one would be expected to render some sort of first aid or at least call an ambulance and hang around. The citizen should also expect to be sued but I think insurance would be available for that.
I’m all for police accountability but eliminating protections necessary for doing the job is exactly the wrong way to go about it.
We’re interested in knowing more about the woman. Does she have prior arrests? How did she respond during those arrests, if any? Was she compliant with officer’s during any prior arrest, if any, or combative?
FYI: Paid administrative leave is protocol.
Mr Robillard, that is useful info. I think there needs to be clear instruction on what to do if you involved in a self defense shooting, particularly care of the attacker once incapacitated. De-escalation techniques would be useful as well.
> I still can not fathom why anyone wants to be police in these cities, not because of the risk, but the liability and the ingratitude.
On the subject of “gratitude”, it seems to me that gratitude is NOT an inherent human instinct but a learned behavior that comes in the package of behaviors we call “civilization”.
Primitive tribal humans likely had no notion of “gratitude”. They were foragers and everything was free for the taking, as long as some neighboring tribe didn’t want to fight you for it.
If stuff was free, the was no need to thank anyone for anything. Not even the gods.
It was the shaman’s job to talk to the gods and appease them so that they wouldn’t be angry and screw things up. But gratitude?
A very large segment of our population is only marginally civilized and it is probably a very unrealistic expectation that they would be “grateful” for anything.
Entitled? Yes. But why be grateful for anything you’re entitled to?
Are Democrat tribalists like AOC, or Ilhan Omar, or Maxine Waters grateful for anything?
Is Black Lives Matter grateful for living in a capitalist economy that produces vast quantities of food so that periodic famines don’t wipe out two thirds of their tribe?
“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”.
Personally, I regard myself as “civilized”, and I regard the police as essential agents of civilization with the responsibility of deterring and repelling any nomadic foragers who might get the idea to help themselves to food and resources our community has produced. So therefore, I DO have gratitude for the police.