NC Cop Who Repeatedly Struck Woman During Arrest Gets 40-hour Suspension

America is a free coun­try. Well, think care­ful­ly when you think you are free if you smoke a joint because this is like­ly to hap­pen to you if you are Black and accused of smelling like you smoked a joint. You don’t have to be smok­ing or have been in pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na. It does­n’t mat­ter that you may have only been close to some­one who had smoked some of the weed. You could be bad­ly beat­en by police in America .…. or worse. All of this while tons of cocaine and oth­er dan­ger­ous drugs are flood­ing the streets daily.
What the slave catch­ers are focused on are black peo­ple who smell like they smoked a joint.

A police offi­cer who repeat­ed­ly punched a Black woman dur­ing an arrest in North Carolina last month was sus­pend­ed Tuesday after author­i­ties released new video of the encounter that showed a broad­er view of what hap­pened than bystander footage shared on social media.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings told reporters at a news con­fer­ence that Officer Vincent Pistone received a 40-hour sus­pen­sion after an inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that he used exces­sive force dur­ing the Nov. 13 con­fronta­tion. The probe deter­mined that six oth­er offi­cers involved were jus­ti­fied in their actions.

The new­ly released body cam­era and bystander videos show dif­fer­ent angles and what led to the encounter at a Charlotte bus stop that sparked pub­lic out­rage. They show that the woman struck an offi­cer in the face and that he respond­ed by hit­ting her back and knock­ing her off her feet.

Pistone, who was not the offi­cer involved in that ini­tial exchange of blows, is seen on the video repeat­ed­ly strik­ing the woman with a closed fist while four oth­er offi­cers are kneel­ing and hold­ing her down. As it was hap­pen­ing, bystanders shout­ed at the offi­cers to stop. After a few sec­onds, the offi­cers stood and led the woman to a squad SUV with her arms behind her back.

Police pre­vi­ous­ly said that Pistone, who respond­ed that day as back­up, deliv­ered sev­en knee strikes and 10 punch­es to the woman’s thigh. Jennings said Tuesday that all but the first three blows were excessive.

“Fourteen strikes to the female’s leg came after her hands were behind her back,” the chief said in a state­ment. “These strikes were not deemed jus­ti­fied. If the offi­cer made an assess­ment after three leg strikes, he would have seen that they were effec­tive, and the female’s hands were behind her back.”

Jennings said Pistone will also receive addi­tion­al train­ing. A pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion for offi­cers, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #9, did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to email and voice mes­sages seek­ing com­ment and ask­ing whether Pistone had a rep­re­sen­ta­tive who could speak on his behalf.

Prior to the inter­nal probe, a police spokesman said that Pistone’s blows were con­sis­tent with his train­ing and intend­ed to get the woman to com­ply with com­mands by strik­ing a nerve in the leg. Police have declined to release infor­ma­tion on the offi­cers’ races.

When asked by a reporter if the offi­cer who punched the woman in the face was jus­ti­fied in doing so, Jennings said that action was war­rant­ed giv­en that the offi­cer had been struck twice.

“We’re not robots. If there’s an expec­ta­tion that we’ll always say and do the right things, then I think that’s some­thing that’ll nev­er hap­pen,” Jennings said.

Police body cam­era footage released Tuesday shows that offi­cers approached the woman and a man as they were sit­ting at a bus stop in front of a Bojangles restau­rant. The pair explained that they had just got­ten off work, and the woman asked what they had done wrong.

One offi­cer said it smelled like the two were smok­ing mar­i­jua­na, to which the pair said they were smok­ing a legal cannabis com­pound they had bought from a smoke shop. Marijuana is not legal in North Carolina, but sales of cer­tain types of relat­ed prod­ucts are.

An offi­cer then leaned down, took the man’s arm and said, “Do me a favor, put your hands behind your back.”

The woman moved toward that offi­cer demand­ing to know what he was doing, and a sec­ond offi­cer took her arm and pulled her away from the bus stop bench, telling her to put her hands behind her back. His body cam­era the fell to the ground and was fac­ing sky­ward as he pulled the woman by her arm. The woman could be heard scream­ing “Why are you touch­ing me? Stop!” And as they strug­gled and moved into and out of the cam­er­a’s view, she could be seen strik­ing the officer.

A video tak­en by a bystander from across a park­ing lot shows the exchange of punch­es between the woman and the offi­cer. In it, the bystander could be heard say­ing, “I’m pret­ty sure you’re not allowed to do that to police.”

In anoth­er video, a crowd of onlook­ers and cowork­ers of the two being arrest­ed shout­ed at offi­cers who had gath­ered around the woman on the side­walk. “You punched the hell out of a woman like that. How you going to punch the hell out of a woman like that, bruh?” one onlook­er asked.

In oth­er videos, an offi­cer could be seen using a knee and fist to strike the woman’s thigh repeat­ed­ly as she was being asked to put her hands behind her back while lay­ing on the ground. A chaot­ic blend of voic­es grew in the back­ground as more offi­cers arrived. “Quit knee­ing her, man! Quit it! Quit it!” an onlook­er yelled as police walked the male cowork­er away.

The man and woman, who was iden­ti­fied in court doc­u­ments as a 24-year-old Black woman from Charlotte, were both arrest­ed after the con­fronta­tion that day. He was charged with car­ry­ing a con­cealed weapon and she was charged with assault­ing a gov­ern­ment offi­cial. Both were also charged with resist­ing offi­cers and mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion. All of the charges were lat­er dropped.