The superintendent of the Chicago Police Department says
that the reason one of his officers used a Taser stun gun on a woman days away
from giving birth because “you can’t always tell whether somebody is pregnant.”
At eight-months pregnant, Tiffany Rent says she would think
officers would have been aware of her condition before they assaulted and
arrested her on Wednesday morning outside a South Side drug store.
“I was standing at the squad car close enough for him to see
that I was pregnant,” Rent tells the Chicago Tribune.
The department says nothing was wrong with the ways officers
acted, though. According to the police report, Rent“attempted to take off”
after being ticketed for parking her car in a space reserved for handicap
persons outside of a Chicago Walgreens when she was subjected to an electric
pulse from a Taser gun. The maximum fine for using a handicap parking space
without authorization in Chicago is $350.
Moments earlier, Rent tore up the citation and said, “I
ain’t giving you (expletive),” according to the official report. That,
apparently, was enough for cops to use force.
Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy says he believes that it
isn’t always possible to determine if a suspect is or isn’t pregnant so in the
end it’s matter of upholding the law.
“Well, first of all, you can’t always tell whether somebody
is pregnant. So, you want to use it where you are overcoming assault or
preventing escape. That’s what it boils down to,” Supt. McCarthy tells the
Tribune.
To do as much, Rent was shocked by the Taser, then dragged
out of her car, forced to the ground and handcuffed — in front of two of her
young children and her boyfriend. Joseph Hobbs, the father of the child,
suffered a dislocated elbow and was also arrested by police for trying to
intervene. Sharita Rent, Tiffany’s sister, tells the Tribune that some officers
on the scene reportedly made “nasty, cruel comments” and suggested to the
expectant parents that they “call Jesse Jackson.”
“How could you be that cruel to a human being? A pregnant
human being?” asks the sister.
Later Wednesday, a nursing supervisor at the Roseland
Community Hospital ran tests on Rent and said her unborn child appeared to be
in good health, but the expectant mother still has concerns — she has lost two
children during pregnancy before.
“That policy has been in effect for quite some time,”
McCarthy adds. “Whether or not the policy has been adhered to is going to be
examined separately from the investigation into the use of force. So we’ll keep
you posted on that, and we’ll see how it plays out.”
The latest incident follows an episode earlier this year in
Dekalb County, Georgia where Officer Jerad Wheeler was accused of kicking a
woman nine months pregnant, prompting her to receive emergency surgery.