Bay Area police officer filmed punching a woman during an arrest

The video begins by showing a blue sedan in front of a concrete truck stopped in the middle of an intersection. A police officer can be seen pulling a woman out of the sedan and slamming her into the nearby truck before pulling her to the ground. 

Rashad Hollis, a spokesperson for the Vallejo Police Department, confirmed to SFGATE that the viral clip shows a VPD officer making an arrest after security staff at a nearby shopping center told him merchandise had been stolen and the suspects had driven off in a blue sedan. The officer pursued the suspects, who crashed their car twice: once into a family SUV and then again into a cement truck.

In a news release posted to Facebook, VPD said that the reported theft happened Friday on the 1100 block of Admiral Callaghan Lane. Police said the children inside the SUV were not injured, but the mother had minor injuries. 

Hollis told SFGATE the pursuit lasted only about a minute while officers attempted to pull over the woman’s vehicle. He claimed the officer behaved in the manner shown on the video because the woman was resisting arrest.

Romyr Hamilton, the local resident who filmed the clip, told SFGATE he started recording after hearing the officer yell. He said he saw the officer take out his weapon and point it at the passenger side of the blue sedan. 

“I guess [the officer] saw that the passenger and driver were either not moving or incapacitated from the crash,” Hamilton said. “So he was able to just, you know, nonchalantly walk around the front, walk up to the driver door, and then that’s what I captured all on video.”

The officer attempted to arrest the vehicle’s two occupants, but the passenger ran away, police said in the Facebook statement. The officer then opened the driver’s side door and grabbed the wrist of the woman in the driver’s seat. He used a “control hold take down,” the department wrote, to “prevent” the woman from fleeing the scene.

“I understand she was struggling and fighting back, but especially once she was on the ground like that slam against the truck,” Hamilton said. “Vallejo PD said that it was an attempt to pin her against the truck, but it didn’t look like a pin to me, but like a slam.”

“When she was on the ground, and when I was witnessing I was like OK, she’s down, it’s over, and then he punched her,” he added.

Hollis told SFGATE that the officer punched the woman because she had “deeply scratched” the officer’s arms. In the Facebook statement, the department wrote that the officer hit her to “gain immediate compliance.” 

“We do have striking in our policy as one of our use of force and our arrest control tactics,” Hollis said. 

The driver of the car was eventually arrested. The passenger was also arrested after some witnesses chased her down and detained her until officers arrived, Hollis said.  

Police allege the two women stole thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise from various businesses in recent months.

After searching the blue sedan, police found about $2,000 worth of stolen goods, according to the Facebook statement. “The business also provided evidence confirming that the two suspects previously had stolen around $1,000 worth of merchandise” a few weeks earlier, on Sept. 26, police wrote.

Police said the driver of the vehicle had been arrested the week prior, on Oct. 4, on suspicion of stealing $30,000 worth of merchandise from another store. The passenger had outstanding warrants in San Mateo and Napa related to alleged burglaries as well, VPD said.

Hollis said in every instance where Vallejo police officers use force, the actions are reviewed by a “use of force panel,” which consists of command staff, community members and a subject expert. He said the panel will review if the officer’s use of force in Friday’s arrest was excessive. 
This isn’t the first time the Vallejo Police Department has been criticized for its practices. 

Hamilton’s TikTok had amassed 790,000 views as of 11 a.m. on Oct. 18. 

“If you take the situation, the altercation out of context, like I witnessed it, and like I posted it, it doesn’t look right,” Hamilton told SFGATE. “So if it doesn’t look right, then it’s not right. So it doesn’t matter what context is behind it. It’s just an interaction between two human beings, and it didn’t just didn’t sit right with me.”