Megan Graham, diagnosed with cognitive and hearing disabilities, had this done to her by police a few days ago in Federal Way, Washington, a small town south of Seattle on Puget Sound.
Megan Graham... told her story to KIRO 7, her face still black and blue and swollen from the beating...
Graham says because the officer was speaking to her from his running car, she never heard his order to get back into her car. When the officer lunged and grabbed her wrist, she felt she was being attacked.
It's not the first thing I would think of - to try to call 911 if a police officer just lunged at me. Nor might you think the officer would give you a chance to actually dial and speak, but he must have. Because as the story continues
"I pulled my arm back, grabbed my phone and called 911 to call for help," she said. I told the officer I had mental and hearing disabilities, and didn't understand why he was trying to hurt me..."
In the 911 recording, Graham shouts at the officer: "You attacked me before you said anything! There is no point whatsoever for you to touch me like that, especially with my condition, so how dare you even touch me?" ...
Here's where it gets
totally bizarre and inexplicable.
During the 911 call, another responding officer punched Graham several times in the face, and is heard loudly ordering her repeatedly to stop resisting.
Amazingly,
even the police report states that she was hit in the face by the officer.
the police report states: "As the officer approached, Graham squared off against him in a fighter's stance and attempted to strike him with closed fists. The officer responded with closed fist strikes to Graham's face, which brought her to the ground where she was handcuffed."
If Graham did assume a figher's stance -- something she denies and an odd thing to do, but I suppose is possible -- is a police officer's immediate reaction supposed to be to "respond with closed fist strikes to Graham's face" ?? (That was a rhetorical question). Far be it for me to suggest a more sensible approach might be to back off and try to calm everything down.
The police claim she was "resisting" but resisting, apparently, is in the eyes of the beater.
"That woman was not resisting, I saw it," said Graham's friend, Deborah Fenwick. "That woman doesn't have a violent bone in her body. She's got a heart of gold. If she would have understood the officer's commands in the first place, she would have absolutely complied with him."
Naturally, Graham is
being charged with felony assault...
A Kirkland woman who faces a felony assault charge is also accusing Federal Way officers of police brutality during her arrest.
and just as naturally...
"The incident and the force used to affect the arrest is under review."
You can rest assured that after this review no police officers will be charged with assault and battery, or even disciplined. Megan, though, even if she doesn't end up in prison, is likely to nightmares for long to come.
"I could taste the blood going into the back of my sinuses," she said. "Once I was on the ground, I was hurt. All of a sudden there's all these cops on top of me pushing my face in the ground. It was just so unbelievably horrific and upsetting."
And she gets to read comments from people who
write stuff like this:
... To tell you the truth, since police officers are putting their lives on the line every day for me to be able to lead a trouble free life, if they think they need to punch someone to restrain them because they don't know that they have to stay in the car when they've been pulled over, even for something like talking on a cell phone while driving, I'm going to side with them.
911 CALL RECORDING