Report: Woman says she miscarried after being handcuffed by BART officers

SAN FRANCISCO – A California woman says that she miscarried after being handcuffed on the ground by police who were responding to an apparently false report that her boyfriend had threatened to rob a man, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Video of the July arrest was released Wednesday by the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.

CBS San Francisco reports that Bay Area Rapid Transit officers responded to a report that a passenger who was possibly armed tried to rob another passenger. Other witnesses disputed the report, saying the reporting party called police after some sort of disagreement with the passenger, Michael Smith.

According to the 911 call the man made, which was also released Wednesday, the man said “two African-Americans…just tried to rob me” and that the man might have a weapon on him. He said the man was wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt.

Warning: This video contains violence and graphic language

But according to the Chronicle, 24-year-old Andrea Appleton said that she and Smith were on their way to a doctor’s appointment and the incident began when a white man on the BART train began arguing with them and saying that they smelled.

Smith was acquitted last week on charges of battery on an officer stemming from the encounter. He was not armed during the confrontation.

The video depicts officers confronting Smith with at least one gun drawn as he exits the train and demanding that he get on the ground. Smith initially struggles with the officers while one on-looker records the incident and implores him to cooperate.

CBS San Francisco reports that Smith looked to be relatively calm until an officer also took down his girlfriend, keeping a knee in her back even after being informed she was pregnant. After repeatedly stating she was pregnant, the officer gets off Appleton and helps her to her feet.

In the video, Smith continues to struggle with officers even as he is restrained and at one point, he spits at an officer who responds by punching Smith in the face.

The department reportedly has a policy against handcuffing pregnant women behind their backs. In a statement, BART said that it “was not clear or known that the woman was pregnant” when she was taken to the ground and handcuffed.

Appleton told the Chronicle she miscarried two weeks after the incident.

“It’s not right,” she told the paper. “It’s not fair to me or my boyfriend to lose our child and to have to go through this.”  

Smith’s attorney, Jeff Adachi, said that Appleton was in her first trimester at the time of the arrest. Adachi called on the prosecutor’s office to drop the remaining charges against Smith and lamented that “the person who made the false report has gone scot-free.”

BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost told CBS San Francisco the department’s internal affairs unit is investigating. Trost said Smith was not cooperative during the arrest and the reporting party had said he believed Smith was armed.

Adachi argued in court that Smith had a reasonable response to excessive force and that he and his girlfriend were racially profiled, which Trost denied.

 “BART Police is a progressive agency and has been on the forefront – and in some cases the model approach – to training in the areas of fair and impartial policing, bias-based policing, crisis intervention, cultural competence training, and de-escalation training,” she said.