The Palm Beach Post

Police wrestle a black woman to ground, exposing her breasts

- By Alex Horton Washington Post

Two police officers in Alabama wrestled a woman to the ground in a Waffle House on Sunday morning, exposing her breasts during the struggle and prompting comparison­s to two black men arrested in a Philadelph­ia Starbucks earlier this month.

The incident sparked a sit-in protest at the store Sunday afternoon and prompted responses from the NAACP and celebritie­s.

A video that has gone viral shows Chikesia Clemons, 25, sitting on a chair at the diner in Saraland, north of Mobile, as one of the officers grabs her neck and right wrist in an attempt to subdue her. Clemons describes a disagreeme­nt with a store employee that triggered the police response. She soon appears conscious of her tube top and raises her arms to cover her bust line.

“You’re not going to grab on me like that, no,” Clemons tells the officer, who appears to speak to another officer off-camera in the video filmed by Clemons’ friend, Canita Adams.

What happens next is unclear. AL. com published an edited version of Adams’ video that jumps to the moment Clemons and the two officers goto the ground in a violent tumble. It is unclear from the video who initiated the struggle that forced Clemons and the officers to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Clemons asks as the struggle continues on the tile floor.

“I’ll break your arm, that’s what I’m about to do,” an offifficer says.

The struggle continues, with officers demanding Clemons to stop “resisting” as her breast is exposed.

At one point, an officer places his hand around her neck.

“You’re choking me!” Clemons cries out.

The offifficer releases his grip when a third offifficer nearby gestures with his hand. Clemons was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, her mother Chiquitta Clemons-Howard told AL.com.

One person was arrested at a protest outside the store where Clemons was arrested, AL.com reported.

Sunday’ s arrest comes 10 days after the April 12 incident of two black men arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelph­ia under allegation­s of trespassin­g. The two men were not charged and were later released, but the viral moment led to an apology from Starbucks’s chief executive Kevin Johnson and a decision to close down all of its more than 8,000 company-owned stores for an afternoon in May for racial-bias training.

Clemons-Howard told AL.com the dispute arose after her daughter refused to pay an extra 50 cents for plastic utensils.

“They didn’t even ask her to leave, she was waiting for them to give her the district manager’s card so she could file a complaint on one of the waitresses,” Clemons-Howard told the outlet. “When they went to go get the card, that’s when the police showed up. The offifficer should’ve come in and said we need you to leave.”

Clemons, Clemons-Howard and Adams could not be reached for comment.

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