A North Carolina woman plans to take legal action against a local police department after an encounter with officers left her bloodied and bruised.
Cellphone video obtained by Atlanta Black Star from Ja’Lana Dunlap-Banks’ attorney shows part of the incident with Fayetteville Police officers on Sept. 6. One officer removed her seatbelt while the other tried to drag Dunlap-Banks from the vehicle by her wrist.
“She pretty much yanked me out the car, was holding my wrist very tightly squeezing it,” Dunlap-Banks, 22, told reporters. “She tried to tussle me for my phone because I was recording at the time to stop my video recording.”
The 110-pound woman who suffers from sickle cell said she recorded the incident for her safety. She didn’t want to “end up like George Floyd.”
Dunlap-Banks was in an empty lot taking photos for her employer when the patrol car pulled up. Her attorney, Harry Daniels, told Atlanta Black Star the ordeal left his client with a head injury and swollen wrist.
“Ms. Ja’Lana was doing her job working, doing her duties for that day,” Daniels said.
The company Dunlap-Banks worked for hired someone to clean up the property, and she went to the site to make sure the illegally dumped trash was removed. She had just sat back in her car and was about to start the ignition, she said when the officers approached and questioned her presence on the property.
Chief Gina V. Hawkins said Dunlap-Banks was about a half mile from a scene “where a potentially violent suspect fled from police.”
The video shows a female officer asking Dunlap-Banks to present her photo identification card. Both officers said they asked the woman to get out of the vehicle numerous times. Dunlap-Banks said she had given the officers her name, and the card was in a clear fanny pack fastened around her waist where the officers could see.
At one point in the video, she refuses to give the officers the photo identification that’s in the bag. Daniels said Dunlap-Banks was not obligated to give the officers her identification.
“You’re not getting it because I haven’t did anything wrong,” she told the officers.
The one-minute video starts with the female officer pulling the woman’s hand from outside the vehicle.
“Please stop,” Dunlap-Banks told the female officer in the video.
