An extra-drunken St. Patrick's Day led to one San Francisco woman getting slammed to the ground by BART police, her face severely bloodied, four bones in her face broken, and two teeth damaged. And since she's a model who also works as a bartender, she is now suing BART police for using excessive force in trying to detain her and there is some fairly uncomfortable body-camera and surveillance footage from the incident that suggests that that the officers did, at least, drop her on her face, if not throw her down as they were trying to book her at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.
The trouble appears to have started when 28-year-old Megan Sheehan ended up at Lake Merritt Station on March 17, 2014 after "a heavy night of drinking," and as ABC 7 reports, it was there that a BART police officer appears to have gotten into some kind of altercation as he tried to arrest her. As the LA Times clarifies, she was "arrested on suspicion of battery on an officer and resisting arrest," and it was a while later, after she was taken to the jail in Dublin, that officers were trying to book her at an intake window and a scuffle occurred that resulted in Sheehan lying prone and bloodied on the floor of the lobby.
As you can see from multiple angles in different surveillance videos obtained by ABC 7, it's hard to tell whether Sheehan turned to fight with officers and was then thrown to the ground, or if she suddenly turned to try to move or escape, and the officers' grip on her was not sufficient to soften her fall, though they were holding both her arms. You can hear an audible thud as her face hits the ground, someone saying, "Ooh," and one officer then saying, "You might want medical." One of her arms was apparently held by a BART cop, while one was being held by an Oakland Police officer.
A police report from the incident says that Sheehan was "violently punching" and suggests that the officer merely "guided her to the ground."
Sheehan is now suing BART in federal court, and plans to amend the lawsuit to include the city of Oakland and the Oakland officer. The suit says the officers’ actions were "willful, wanton, reckless, malicious, oppressive and/or done with a conscious or reckless disregard."
As Sheehan says, "I should have never gotten that drunk, but also there are ways to detain someone and not break their face."