Oklahoma police pepper sprayed an 84-year-old woman after kicking her door down to arrest her son for running a stop sign.
Muskogee police then handcuffed Geneva Smith and dragged her off to jail along with her 56-year-old son, who was tasered.
At the jail, Smith suffered a panic attack and was then transported to a hospital.
Muskogee police said they had no choice but to pepper spray the elderly woman because she did not comply with police orders.
“Turn around and face that way now or I’ll spray you,” Muskogee police officer Michelle Casady can be heard saying on the body cam footage that was released Friday.
google_ad_client = "ca-pub-8719239441051793";
google_ad_slot = "3606839893";
google_ad_width = 300;
google_ad_height = 600;
Two seconds later, the Casady pepper sprays Smith in the eyes as the elderly woman is walking backwards.(function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:8606150711183207,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7736-8965"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.lockerdome.com/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");
Smith then falls to the ground and is arrested.
Fox 23, which viewed the entire video but did not post it, said Smith was pepper sprayed 40 seconds after the initial command to turn around.
According to the Muskogee Phoenix:
Muskogee Police Chief Rex Eskridge said Smith failed to comply with officers’ orders and turned toward the kitchen. Smith actively resisted by ducking away from officers, Wood said.
The police department’s use of force policy states that pepper spray, considered to be the lowest use of force, is to be used for passive resistance.
Eskridge said that when Casady used the pepper spray, she “believed she was acting within policy in using” pepper spray to gain compliance. The matter was still under internal investigation as of Friday morning, Eskridge said.
The incident took place on August 7 at around 2:45 a.m. after Muskogee police witnessed her son, Arthur Paul Blackmon, run a stop sign.
They then followed him to the home where he ran inside, refusing commands to stop, according to local news reports.
The attorney for the police department said they did not have a warrant, but kicked the door down because the truck Blackmon was driving was not registered to that address, so they assumed he was committing a home invasion.
However, a male and female voice on the other side of the door were heard saying “call police” and “call 911,” so maybe they thought their home was being invaded by the cops.
They then tasered and handcuffed him.
Smith, who was sleeping, was roused awake by all the commotion, and tried to figure out what was going on.
But that is what got her pepper sprayed.
“And I just came out and asked them what was going on, and they just pepper-sprayed me,” she told Fox 23.
The post Watch: Oklahoma Police Pepper Spray 84-Year-Old Woman appeared first on PINAC News.