A disabled woman suing the city of Los Angeles for alleged civil rights violations conceded Tuesday that she slugged an officer during a confrontation in South Los Angeles in 2015, but said she did so in self-defense because he started the fight.
“It was a natural reaction after he hit me,” 40-year-old Zennea Foster said of Los Angeles police Officer Andre Burton.
The officer then retaliated by hitting her again, with both blows landing against one of her eyes, according to Foster, who was born with Erb’s palsy. According to her attorney, the condition prevents the mother of four from making normal movements of her left arm and hand.
The plaintiff told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury that after she fell to the ground, other officers joined the melee and began kicking her. She testified she additionally felt pain to her back caused by the officers striking her with either their knees or their elbows.
`They kept saying I was resisting arrest, but I wasn’t, Foster said.
Burton maintains that Foster — who named him and three other officers, along with the city, in her May 2016 lawsuit — was the aggressor and that he hit her in order to protect himself after she struck him.
Foster’s lawyer, Carl Douglas, alleges his client’s legs were hobbled and that she endured the worst beating of a female by police that he has seen in his 37 years as a lawyer. At his request, she stood up in the witness chair to demonstrate the limits of her use of her disabled arm, which prevents her from such common movements as clinching her fist while raising her arm above her head.
According to Foster, tenants called her to a home she owns on South Denker Avenue on Feb. 4, 2015. She said she has rented rooms in the four- bedroom home since 2013 and that she was notified that a stabbing occurred during a dispute between two of her tenants.
About eight officers arrived about 10:45 p.m., some armed with shotguns, she said. They handcuffed her boyfriend, who arrived at the scene separately from her, and towed his motorcycle even though he had nothing to do with the stabbing, Foster said.
Foster said she contacted the tenant being sought for the stabbing and offered her phone to one of the officers so he could talk to the man, but Burton intervened.
“I told him I wasn’t talking to him and I said it twice,” Foster said.
Foster said she holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and has worked as a special education teaching assistant for Los Angeles Unified for nearly 19 years. She said she once aspired to be a probation officer.
–City News Service