US cops taser 8-month pregnant black woman for parking dispute
Press TV – June 8, 2012
Chicago police officers have reportedly used a Taser stun gun on a black woman days away from giving birth and arrested her over a parking dispute.
Tiffany Rent, who is eight months pregnant, was tasered, dragged out of her car and forced to the ground and handcuffed by police officers on Wednesday outside a drug store for parking violation.
Rent was approached by officers in a parking lot and ticketed for parking in a handicapped space. According to police report she tore up the ticket and threw it at the officer.
The police report also said that, Rent attempted to take off after being fined, however she was shocked by a taser gun. Joseph Hobbs, the father of the child, was also arrested by police when he tried to intervene. He suffered a dislocated elbow during the arrest.
The superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, Garry McCarthy, said that the officers were not wrong in the way they arrested Rent and Hobbs, and the reason the officer used Taser was because “you can’t always tell whether somebody is pregnant.”
However, Rent told the Chicago Tribune that she was standing “at the squad car close enough for him to see that I was pregnant.”
Rent’s sister, Shareeta Rent, said the family believed that the police employed excessive force on a pregnant woman. “How could you do that to a pregnant woman? My niece and nephew are in the back seat of the car crying. They did that in front of her kids.”
A nursing supervisor at the Roseland Community Hospital ran tests on Rent later on Wednesday, saying the unborn child was in good health but the mother still has fears as she formerly lost two children during pregnancy.
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- Chicago cops Taser 8-month pregnant woman for parking violation (blacklistednews.com)
