Woman claims Riverside police used excessive force; filing $10M claim

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KABC) -- "I wake up crying, I go to sleep crying. In the middle of the night I cry," Tyesha Calhoun said.

Her injuries are severe. She said it is a case of excessive force by police.

"I have a plate and six screws on my leg," she said. It could take eight months for her to start walking again.

It happened on Jan. 7. Calhoun was driving on Trautwein at the intersection of JFK in Riverside when she was hit by an alleged drunk driver.

"A drunk driver just hit the back of my car," Calhoun said in the 9-1-1 call.

Besides calling police, Calhoun called her family, and several family members showed up at the scene.

That's when she said for no reason at all one officer became aggressive.

"He just went from being a police officer to being a butt," she said.

So she called 9-1-1 again, which she claims upset the officer even more.

"He told me to shut my black ass up because I was on the phone calling the police on the police," she said.

That's when she said they all tried to leave the scene and officers tried to arrest them.

"He just ran from behind and snatched me from my hair. I didn't even see him coming because my back was to him," she said. "He slammed me on the floor. He called me a black bitch."

Calhoun is in the process of filing a $10 million claim against the Riverside Police Department.

In the lawsuit she claims the officer "began punching her in the face," among other things. She also recalls "passing out several times."

In response to questions from Eyewitness News, the police department gave us access to what they say is all the audio and dashcam recordings made during the incident. That includes three 9-1-1 calls and 13 audio recordings made by police officer belt recorders.

We watched all the video and listened to all of the audio, close to three hours of it.

Officers have discretion when it comes to using their belt recorders. In this case they appear to start recording when they tell Calhoun they're going to impound her car because she was driving with a suspended license.

DMV records show her license has been suspended since 2012.

Then things went south. Even though she told us she was driving that night, on the recording she tells police she wasn't driving the car.

"You have no proof I was driving. Prove I was driving. Prove it! Prove it! Back up man, back up," Calhoun said in the recording.

Among the recordings are witness accounts of what happened, including one from a paramedic who told police that Calhoun actually got back into the car at one point and started it, as if to drive off.

"Ma'am, don't go in the car. Ma'am, you can't go in the car either," an officer said in the recording.

The paramedics said police pulled her out of the car and tried to arrest her, but she walked away.

When police tried to arrest her again, the paramedic said she struggled and her sister tried to pull her away from the officer.

Cries of "help" can be heard in the recording after that.

It is unclear from the recordings exactly when Calhoun got hurt. She and her sister were arrested for battery on a peace officer, among other things.

Her brother Jamar was arrested for resisting. He is the one lying on the sidewalk in the dashcam video.

He was interviewed by police afterward.

It is not clear at what point in the confrontation the alleged name calling happened, but we did not hear any racial slurs on the recordings we were given, nor do any of the family members make claims about racial slurs in the audio recordings of their follow-up interviews.

""I don't want people to think that they have to be scared of the police because of what happened to me. But at the same time you just can't trust everybody," Calhoun said.

So far no charges have been filed against Calhoun or any of the family members, but the district attorney is still investigating the incident.

The Riverside Police Department was unable to go on camera with Eyewitness News because of the pending litigation. But they said they conducted an investigation and they believe the entire incident was handled appropriately.