Police in Rio Vista, California, released body camera footage of a May 5 traffic stop that ended with a police officer body slamming a woman who was accused of filming too close to the car. According to the Sacramento Bee, Cherish Thomas and her mother Deshaunna Payne came upon a traffic stop involving Thomas’ sister Mea Thomas. The report says police pulled Mea Thomas over for expired tags, and then told Thomas her car would be towed because the DMV had suspended her registration two years ago. Two of Mea Thomas’ passengers were then detained in an officer’s vehicle while Mea Thomas argued.
Cherish Thomas and Deshaunna Payne came out to see what was happening and why. Officers told them to go back to their car. They returned from their car with their phones out, filming the stop and saying as much. In videos you can see below, Cherish Thomas and her mother continue to stand outside of their cars, filming with their phones as relatives of theirs are handcuffed and put into officers’ vehicles. Thomas begins walking alongside the road toward the traffic stop when one officer begins saying, “Don’t come close to me. You ain’t coming over by our cars right now.” Thomas answers that she is not coming close to him. The officer puts his hand on Thomas’ right arm and begins turning her away. As she turns back, both of her arms are now behind her back and being held by the officer, and the two begin to struggle as Thomas tries to move away from his grasp. The officer then lifts her all the way up into the air, and slams her face first into the ground.
According to the Sacramento Bee, Rio Vista officers say that the two passengers already detained inside of the vehicle then began kicking and damaging the police SUV, a charge the detainees deny. Both Thomases, Payne, and a male identified as Mychal Ivy have been charged with “resisting arrest, obstructing or delaying an investigation and felony vandalism.” Cherish Thomas has reportedly also been charged with public intoxication.
Thomas was interviewed by KRCA News about the incident, saying “I was scared, I’m not gonna lie. Because at the end of the day that’s a police officer and they can do what they want to do.”
If you watch the various videos of the incident below, one of them is from the body-slamming officer’s body camera. In it, after he slams Thomas to the floor, cuffs her, and then tries to get her up to a sitting position, you can see hear her saying “Stupid. Stupid.” At this point the arresting officer asks her how drunk she is. Thomas seems to regain her composure a bit and then asks him if he knows he just assaulted someone. She tries to laugh confidently, but if you listen closely to the moment when she repeats the word “stupid,” and you can hear what true terror of being bullied and powerless sounds like.
I’ve listened to that moment over and over again, and it will not leave me. She is in shock because there is no way to gird yourself for the kind of sheer brutality she’s just experienced. She might put on a brave face but something was taken from her, and Thomas’ calls for the unidentified officer to be fired need to be taken seriously.