Police officers in Riverside County, California, are being investigated after a video surfaced on social media that showed them throwing a Spanish-speaking woman to the ground while she was trying to sell flowers.
Local newspaper the Press Enterprise reports that the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department is looking into the video, which shows one of its deputies roughly arresting a woman who was on the scene to sell flowers at the nearby Perris High School graduation on June 6.
The video shows the deputy approaching the woman and trying to take her flowers away. The woman resists and appears to push back a bit against the officer, who then grabs her by the hair and throws her to the ground on the pavement.
As the officer tried to subdue her, the woman lashed out at him and questioned why he was bothering with her when there were actual criminals in the area.
“Why don’t you get the gang members!” the woman yells in Spanish, according to the Press Enterprise’s translation. “Why me? Someone who is trying to make an honest living?”
The officer doesn’t respond and simply handcuffs her and keeps her pinned to the ground until a fellow officer comes over to assist him.
The sheriff’s department tells the Press Enterprise that police “warned and cited 15 people for vending without the necessary city permits” at that location on June 6, and it claimed that “the short, publicly produced video does not have the full context or content of the incident.”
Watch the video below.