A group of Los Angeles police officers punched, kicked and hogtied a disabled woman who was no threat to them, an attorney for the woman told a jury Wednesday, but a lawyer for the city said it was the plaintiff who started the 2015 confrontation by slugging an officer in the midst of a stabbing investigation at a rental property she owns.
Zennea Foster’s lawyer, Carl Douglas, alleges that his 42-year-old client endured the worst beating of a female by police that he has seen in his 37 years as a lawyer.
Foster was born with Erb’s palsy, which prevents the mother of four from making normal movements of her left arm and hand, he said.
“A police officer is never allowed to use unreasonable force even when making a lawful arrest,” Douglas told jurors in his opening statement.
Deputy City Attorney Geoffrey Plowden countered that Foster could have avoided being hurt if she had obeyed the officers’ orders and stayed out of the home where they were looking for a man suspected of stabbing another man.
“Ms. Foster broke the law and entered the home,” Plowden said.
Without any provocation, Foster slugged Officer Andre Burton in the face and scratched one of his arms with her long fingernails, Plowden said.
Burton is a defendant in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, along with fellow officers Marcus Moreno and William Chamberlain, Sgt. Neil Wank and the city.
According to Douglas, tenants called Foster on Feb. 4, 2015, about a stabbing at a house she owns on South Denker Avenue in South Los Angeles. She asked her boyfriend to meet her there because of the possible danger she faced, her attorney said.
When the officers arrived about 10:45 p.m., they handcuffed the boyfriend and towed his motorcycle, then entered the building to look for the stabbing suspect, Douglas said. Meanwhile, Foster found out the man being sought was one of her tenants and contacted him on her cell phone, he said.
Foster offered the phone to Burton so he could talk to the tenant, but he refused and swore at her, according to Douglas. Foster then walked past Burton to try and find another officer who would be willing to speak to her tenant, Douglas said.
“Burton grabbed the woman on her left shoulder and punched the woman in the face,” Douglas alleged.
When Foster defended herself by hitting back, Burton punched her again and she fell to the floor, he said.
The officers handcuffed the plaintiff despite her pleas that she could not move her left arm, according to Douglas, who said she was kicked while on the floor and a plastic device was put across her ankle and then linked to the handcuffs.
“That’s called hog-tieing, a technique that is not allowed in the LAPD,” Douglas told the jury.
Foster, who has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and has worked as a special education teaching assistant for Los Angeles Unified for nearly 20 years, to this day still finds it hard to brush her teeth and hair with her good arm and also suffers more migraine headaches than she did before the confrontation, Douglas said. He showed jurors a photo of his 5-foot-3-inch client taken after the encounter, with bruises on her right arm and one black eye.
Plowden told jurors that the officers did not know Foster was disabled and found themselves in the middle of a “very dangerous police operation” as they looked for the stabbing suspect.
“There were a lot of people who didn’t like the police there that night,” Plowden said.
Burton grabbed Foster and arrested her after she tried to enter the home, but used reasonable force, according to Plowden.
Audio recordings of the confrontation show it was Foster who was using foul language, not Burton, and that she ignored Wank’s orders to stop resisting, Plowden said.
Burton, the trial’s first witness, said none of the officers kicked Foster and that all his actions that night were found in compliance with LAPD policy.
Asked by Douglas if he was proud of his actions that night, Burton replied, “Every day I’m proud to put on my uniform.”
–City News Service