Less than a week after police officers were caught on video punching and kicking street vendors in Sunset Park, another violent incident was captured by a bystander in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. The shaky footage shows an officer “tackling a clearly pregnant woman and riding her to the ground,” the Daily News reports. (Video embedded below.)
At about 2:15 am on Saturday, September 20th, Sandra Amezquita, 43, was thrown belly-first to the ground by an officer.
Someone is heard shouting, “Don’t resist!” as the 5-foot-4 woman sort of wobbles in the headlights before a cop yanks her hands behind her back and slams her into the street, landing on her back and holding her down. That officer is now the second cop from the 72nd Precinct to be under investigation by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
The five-month-pregnant woman suffered vaginal bleeding after the incident. Days later, she is bruised on her stomach and arms and is experiencing abdominal pain. “I was afraid something happened to my baby. I am still afraid that something is wrong,” she told the Daily News. Amezquita was issued a summons for disorderly conduct.
“The first thing I thought was they killed my baby and they’re going to kill my wife,” said the father, Ronel Lemos, who watched the cops tackle her and wasn’t able to help.
Lemos was arrested for assaulting a police officer. Lemos and Amezquita said they were in the street because they heard their seventeen-year-old son screaming as he was being beaten by police. Their son was charged with illegal possession of a knife and resisting arrest.
