Video shows officer kick and drag a woman
Witness: ‘A scary situation for everybody’; SJPD has launched an internal review of the incident
SAN JOSE >> An eyewitness video emerged this week of a San Jose police officer kicking, dragging and arresting a woman in a McDonald’s parking lot in an incident that prompted an internal review amid fresh scrutiny of the department’s use of force.
The minute-long cellphone video, recorded Wednesday afternoon by San Jose resident Josh Gil, who witnessed the incident, shows a woman sitting outside a silver car as a police officer stands a few feet away. Within a few seconds, the officer appears to dart toward the woman and kick her in the side — sending her facedown onto the pavement — before handcuffing her.
He then drags her several feet by the wrists across the ground toward an unmarked police SUV. The footage ends as the woman leans, upright, against the squad car, hands behind her back.
“It was nothing like she was trying to run or anything — she was already on her knees; there wasn’t much she could have done,” Jonathan Gastelum, another eyewitness to the incident, said Friday.
Gastelum, a San Jose resident,
said he pulled into the parking lot of the McDonald’s at 28th and Santa Clara streets as the encounter unfolded and saw the officer drag the woman across the sidewalk, shouting “Shut up!” and “I told you so!” A second officer, meanwhile, appeared to have his gun trained on the woman’s vehicle, where two children sat inside crying as another woman yelled that they had “just bought the car.”
In an initial summary of the encounter, police wrote that the woman was arrested without incident. But Gastelum said that’s not how it appeared.
“It was a scary situation for everybody,” Gastelum said. “It was just — it was just bad.”
The video was shared to social media Thursday afternoon, after Gil sent it to friends. By Friday, it had been viewed more than 9,000 times.
“No child should ever have to see their mother endure that type of brutality, you know?” Gil told this news organization. “Even if she was guilty of the crime they suspected her of committing, there was no reason for them to use excessive force while she was complying. There’s 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 surfaced on social media. The officer, who police did not identify, has been placed on administrative leave.
“I understand the scrutiny we are going to receive when these type of videos go viral. We’re not going to run away from it,” Garcia said. “But what you’re seeing is a small clip of a larger situation.”
Garcia said police had sought the silver car for a week, after officers tried to pull it over for a vehicle code violation July 18 and its driver fled.
That prompted police to obtain a seizure warrant for the car, and when officers tried to stop it Tuesday, it sped away again. Officers saw the car again Wednesday and conducted a traffic stop, leading to the encounter in the McDonald’s lot.
“A vehicle takes off from from police twice, there are people in the car and the officers don’t know what’s going on. People don’t flee from police for no reason,” he said. “That said, I totally understand the sensitivity, and the scrutiny here. We’re looking at the force that was used and analyzing it.”
The woman seen in the video was booked into Santa Clara County Jail for driving on a suspended license, possession of paraphernalia and resisting arrest.
The incident comes amid ongoing scrutiny — and proposed reforms — regarding excessive use of force and suspected misconduct by SJPD officers. Both Mayor Sam Liccardo and Santa Clara County Public Defender Molly O’Neal have championed moving police complaint investigations out of the department’s in-house internal affairs unit and into the purview of the Office of the Independent Police Auditor.
Earlier this week, District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced that he was forming a new Public and Law Enforcement Integrity Team, in which prosecutors and investigators would supplement police departments’ internal affairs units, as well as the independent police auditor’s offices in San Jose and Palo Alto.
A spokesperson for the DA’s Office said that team is “carefully reviewing the incident” captured on video Wednesday.