WASHINGTON — District leaders are demanding answers into an altercation with police on a Metro platform that left a woman bloody and in handcuffs. Witnesses to Saturday’s incident on the Gallery Place Red Line to Shady Grove platform said the woman appeared to be experiencing homelessness and some mental health crisis.
“She was talking to herself, so I was just watching her to make sure no one messed with her,” Alexia Clinton, a bystander who filmed the whole incident, said.
Clinton said she stepped in when a man threatened to stab the woman. Clinton said she argued with him and was threatened with a stabbing as well.
“All of a sudden four police officers start running onto the platform,” Clinton said.
But Clinton said when the officers immediately went after the woman and not the man who flashed a knife at them, she started recording cellphone video. The clip is only 59 seconds and is disturbing to watch. It starts with the four officers wrestling a woman on the ground.
"It does not take four cops to get a 90-pound woman on the ground," Clinton is heard saying in the video.
As people on the platform can be heard screaming, "what’s happening?!" Clinton continues yelling at the officers behind her phone.
"She’s bleeding," she is heard saying. "You guys knocked her f**king tooth out! She’s bleeding! She’s clearly mentally unwell! He threatened to stab people and she’s on the ground?!”
Clinton's questions continue on the video as she points her camera towards the man who had threatened to stab her and the woman. Clinton said he was leaning against a platform wall watching the altercation unfold.
“[Police] ambushed her, assuming that she's the person that committed the crime because she's homeless,” Clinton told WUSA9 in an interview Thursday afternoon. “I thought that I had grown pretty desensitized to police violence.”
But this, she said, changed everything as she stood just steps away from Saturday’s altercation, pleading with police, her cellphone recording it all.
ANC Commissioner Alexandra Bailey is one of several District leaders calling for a complete review of the incident.
“We're currently sitting through, you know, the trial around Derek Chauvin and the death of George Floyd," she said. "These types of images, with somebody's face down bleeding from their mouth with four officers on top of them, I really don't know what we have to do to show officers that that is simply not acceptable. It’s dangerous.”
A WMATA spokesperson said what that video doesn’t show is the woman assaulting the officers. A spokesperson said the Metro Transit officers deployed pepper spray and handcuffed the woman. She was not arrested but taken to the hospital for her injuries and for mental health treatment, the spokesperson said. The man who police said pulled a knife on the ladies was later arrested and charged, the WMATA spokesperson also said.
“If what they are saying is true, then there's absolutely no reason that they can't simply release a video and set the record straight,” Bailey said.
DC Councilmember Brianne Nadeau reacted to the video on Twitter calling it “unacceptable” and that she’s working to get answers. WUSA9 reached out to Nadeau's office but is still waiting to hear back.
Councilmember Charles Allen, however, sent WUSA9 a statement.
“Incidents like this one are exactly why WMATA needs a civilian-led review board that can investigate," Allen said.
“I don't think they [the officers] have what it takes to protect marginalized populations,” Clinton added.
WMATA said because of an ongoing investigation they could not release video from that platform, but a spokesperson said the officers involved have already had diversity and conflict resolution training.
In the meantime, Bailey said her priority is to get the woman from the video help. Bailey said she believes her name is Eileen James. The ANC commissioner is asking anyone who may recognize the woman to contact her at 2f08@anc.dc.gov.