A Florida county sheriff’s deputy used a stun gun on a 70-year-old grandmother, then arrested her on her birthday, which also happened to be the day after Christmas, the woman told Tampa NBC affiliate WFLA. The action that led to the woman’s arrest is allegedly her refusal to allow deputies to search her home for her grandson, the news station reported. Tevin Turner is named on an arrest warrant for allegedly violating his probation by carrying a concealed weapon, but it's his grandmother, Barbara Pinkney, who is the one shown on witness video being grabbed by the wrist and stunned when deputies showed up to her home in Manatee County looking for Turner in the area about 50 miles south of Tampa.
Pinkney’s granddaughter-in-law, Elizabeth Francisco, shot the video footage, throughout which Pinkney can be heard screaming. "I didn't know what else to do. I was just hollering," she WFLA. According to Tampa CBS affiliate WTSP, police said in an arrest report that Pinkney pulled away from a deputy and pushed him before she was taken down. When the deputy administered the first shock, it didn’t produce the intended effect, and he used the Taser on her two more times, with the report claiming that she had resisted.
A probable cause affidavit WFLA obtained revealed that once Pinkney was on the ground, a deputy also lodged his knee in her back in an arrest that ultimately pitted two trained deputies against one grandmother. The affidavit says that she was injured in her left arm, her back, and her upper back. Still, she was the one taken to jail. Later released on a $1,000 bond, Pinkney told local media she is traumatized after the encounter and now tries not to look at police when she sees them. The woman, who faces obstruction and resisting charges, is due in court Jan. 17, 2020, but her grandson, who Pinkney said doesn’t live with her, hasn’t been apprehended.
Monday, Dec 30, 2019 · 10:20:25 PM +00:00
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Lauren Floyd
Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells said in a statement emailed to Daily Kos Monday that deputies had “lawful reason to enter the residence and search for Tevin Turner.” “Had Barbara Pinkney complied with the deputies orders, none of this would have happened,” Wells said. “From everything we can see at this point, it appears the deputy did what he had to do. We take allegations of excessive force seriously, which is why we have opened an internal investigation to gather all the facts.”
