Woman considers legal action against Barstow police after arrest during pregnancy

BARSTOW, Calif. (KABC) -- A video of a pregnant woman's arrest in Barstow has sparked an internal investigation and may soon spark a lawsuit.

Charlena Michelle Cooks and her attorney Caree Harper are considering suing the Barstow Police Department over Cooks' arrest while 8 months pregnant.

"False arrest. Malicious prosecution. Excessive force and a plethora of other things." said Harper.

"The police attacked me!" said Cooks.

The arrest, which was captured on an officer's body camera, shows Cooks being wrestled to the ground.

The ACLU released the video and stated the woman's arrest is "horrifying."

WARNING: This footage contains material that some viewers may find disturbing due to explicit language and/or the graphic nature of the material.

Cooks said it all started when she was trying to drop her daughter off at school.

The video shows an officer first talking to a blonde woman, who claims Cooks had punched her window.

The officer then approaches Cooks, who said the woman was threatening her.

After speaking with Cooks for a little over a minute, the officer asks for her name, which Cooks initially refuses to give.

When the officer tells her, "I actually do have the right to ask you for your name," Cooks says she wants to "make sure" and calls her boyfriend to check. While on the phone, Cooks gives the officer her middle name, Michelle, but still does not disclose her full name.

At that point, Cooks, still on phone, turns and begins to walk away, saying she "doesn't feel comfortable right here." The two officers follow Cooks and are seen trying to put her arms behind her back to detain her.

She can be heard multiple times saying, "Do not touch me. I'm pregnant." There is a struggle, which ends on the ground, and Cooks is handcuffed. Cooks is led to the officers' vehicle and told she is being arrested for obstructing a police officer, but she refuses to get into the cop car.

Cooks discussed the officer's actions with Eyewitness News, "it just didn't seem like he cared what I had to say."

Harper said the incident may have been racially motivated. "You can't ignore the fact that the blonde woman was treated with kid gloves and Ms. Cooks was treated with boxers gloves."

The Barstow Police Department issued a statement saying, "It is apparent that Ms. Cooks actively resisted arrest...this incident was in no way racially motivated."

Harper responded, " Its a shame they are going to stick behind a false arrest."

Many states have a so-called "Stop and Identify" statue, which makes it a crime to refuse to provide identification to police. California is not one of these states. An officer can ask for a person's name or ID, but the person can say no, according to ACLU SoCal staff attorney Adrienna Wong.

"Even if an officer is conducting an investigation, in California, unlike some other states, he can't just require a person to provide ID for no reason," Wong said in a statement last week.

"Officers in California should not be using the obstruction law, Penal Code 148, to arrest someone for failing to provide ID, when they can't find any other reason to arrest them," she said.

Jessica Price, an ACLU staff attorney, said drivers are required to show identification to law enforcement when pulled over. But, she said, in most other cases people don't need to identify themselves to law enforcement.

Price said many officers do not have proper training about this issue. "If you exercise your right to refuse to provide ID, there is a serious risk that an officer would then take you to jail. It would be an unlawful arrest but it would be an arrest which is something that a lot of people don't want to risk."

Charges against Cooks were later dropped and she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Now, she has a message for the officer in the video.

"You just looked at me and said, 'Oh, she must be this way.' I'm not that way. You make me feel that I'm a way that I'm not," she said in tears. "I was just dropping my daughter off at school that day. That's all that I was doing."

In response to another incident, the Barstow Police Department recently agreed to stop arresting people who refused to identify themselves in similar situations.