Cops wrestled woman to ground, exposing her breasts
Two police officers in Alabama wrestled a woman to the ground in a Waffle House on Sunday morning, exposing her breasts during the struggle and prompting comparisons to two black men arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks earlier this month, reports NDTV.
The incident sparked a sit-in protest at the store Sunday afternoon and prompted responses from the NAACP and celebrities.
A video that has gone viral shows Chikesia Clemons, 25, sitting on a chair at the diner in Saraland, north of Mobile, as one of the officers grabs her neck and right wrist in an attempt to subdue her. Clemons describes a disagreement with a store employee that triggered the police response. She soon appears conscious of her tube top and raises her arms to cover her bust line.
‘You're not going to grab on me like that, no,’ Clemons tells the officer, who appears to speak to another officer off-camera in the video filmed by Clemons's friend, Canita Adams.
What happens next is unclear. AL.com published an edited version of Adams's video that jumps to the moment Clemons and the two officers go to the ground in a violent tumble. It is unclear from the video who initiated the struggle that forced Clemons and the officers to the floor.
At one point, an officer places his hand around her neck.
‘You're choking me!’ Clemons cries out.
The officer releases his grip when a third officer nearby gestures with his hand. Clemons was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, her mother Chiquitta Clemons-Howard told AL.com.
One person was arrested at a protest outside the store where Clemons was arrested, AL.com reported.
Sunday's arrest comes 10 days after the April 12 incident of two black men arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia under allegations of trespassing. The two men were not charged and were later released, but the viral moment led to an apology from Starbucks's chief executive Kevin Johnson and a decision to close down all of its more than 8,000 company-owned stores for an afternoon in May for racial-bias training.