An early September arrest of a hot dog cart vendor at the Embarcadero is still in the news because of the very rough physical tactics used, but the SFPD just released body cam video they claim shows the woman assaulted a city employee, and coerced a little girl to cry.

The September 8 arrest of a bacon-wrapped hot dog cart vendor burst into the local news because of what appeared to be some pretty heavy-handed tactics by the SFPD, namely throwing the woman with the hot dog cart to the ground and handcuffing her, while her five-year-old daughter stood by screaming in absolute terror. Follow-up interviews revealed the woman was pregnant.

But the SFPD shot back claiming the woman had assaulted a city employee (which she denies). SFPD also insisted they would release bodycam video that showed “the woman being arrested had committed a battery on an employee with the SF Port,” and that she “told a small child to begin crying near the officers to manipulate the situation.”

Now nearly a full month later, SFPD has released that bodycam video, according to KRON4. We cannot embed it, but you can watch it here, though be warned it depicts a violent arrest and the sounds of a little girl screaming that haunt your nightmares.

The video is silent for about the first 30 seconds, but at the :27 mark, we see a lime-green vested city employee (likely Port of SF or Public Works) overturn the hot dog cart. The sound then kicks in, and we immediately hear the vendor yelling “No!” and the daughter crying. The officer grabs her by the arms at the 1:28 point as she yells “Let go.” Passersby try to step in and deescalate, and of course their cell phones come out. The woman is separated from the cart, which gets confiscated, and one officer is heard saying, “I don’t want to put her in handcuffs, but I will.”

The key exchange is at the 3:35 mark, when the woman lunges to get her cart back. Another lime-green vest employee struggles with her for control of the cart, and grabs the woman by the arm. You can hear someone say “She just assaulted him,” but she absolutely seems to not have done so by what we see in the video. She is handcuffed and thrown to the ground, as bystanders shout, and the daughter wails with terrified screams.

So honestly, this video does not seem to back SFPD’s version of events that the woman assaulted a city employee. But as for their accusation that the woman coached the little girl to cry, yes, there is some eyewitness evidence backing this.

While there is no direct proof, one eyewitness offers this account late in the video. “I heard the lady screaming and pushing the little girl,” the eyewitness says to police. “Yeah, to make her cry for you to leave, release the mother. Because she said that happened last time, that they make a big scandal and they let the people go.”

Well, it ended up being something of a scandal for SFPD that they did go through with the arrest, and kind of roughed up the hot dog vendor in doing so. But whomever is in the right or wrong here, it is still boggling to think that the admittedly understaffed SFPD is wasting effort, muscle, and resources on hot dog vendors when there are far more violent and dangerous crimes happening elsewhere in the city.

Related: Both SFPD and Hot Dog Vendor Speak Out After Viral Video of Rough, Physical Arrest [SFist]

Image: SFPD via Vimeo