
The family of a teenage girl filed a lawsuit against a Tacoma police officer for his brutal assault on their daughter in 2014.
The family of a teenage girl said that they sued an off-duty police officer that assaulted the girl in a Tacoma mall’s parking lot on May 24, 2014. A recently released footage of the incident shows the man grabbing the girl by her hair, throwing her to the ground, and tasing her. The family filed the lawsuit on Friday.
According to court documents, Jared Williams was an off-duty cop working with the Tacoma Mall’s security. The girl’s lawyers noted that the teen was only 15 years old when she was assaulted.
According to the girl’s family, she was heading home with her brother on her bike when she was halted. Officer Williams followed the two kids in his security car when they entered the mall’s car park. The man switched on the car’s emergency lights and horned them over.
Williams was aided by a second security guard who immobilized the girl’s brother. The two men told the pair that they were being trespassed from the commercial site. Monique Charlene Tillman tried to explain the security officers that they did nothing wrong.
The video shows the girl trying to ride off. When that happened, Officer Williams grabbed her, slammed her against a parked car, pushed his forearm across her chest as he reached for his Taser gun. Seconds later he grabbed her by the hair, put her on the ground and tased her.
The girl recalls that the cop tossed her “around like a child’s doll” before body-slamming her into the parking lot’s floor. The video also shows that she was tased while she was lying on the ground.
The girl’s lawyers argued that children riding their bikes home should not worry about cops stopping them without a reason just to use brute force on them. The family said that yet another African American kid was the victim of excessive police force, and the community will no longer condone such behavior.
According to the police, the girl was charged with resisting arrest and attacking a cop. In the meantime, the charges were reportedly dismissed. The media couldn’t confirm that because Tillman is underage.
On Tuesday, the teen said that the lawsuit was not “about the money.” She said that she just wants a “sincere apology” from Williams. Tacoma police declined to comment on the lawsuit, but they explained that Williams was working off-duty at the mall under a city program. They added that the officer was not dismissed from his duty.
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