A recently shared footage shows the shocking moment a female cop laughed before arresting a 70-year-old woman who locked herself in a bathroom.
The body camera footage shows police officer Ronni Carrocia banging on the bathroom door.
She laughed and said to one of her fellow officers: “This is going to be fun.”
When officers arrived at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Oklahoma on October 25, 2021, staff told the officers that the elderly woman, LaDonna June Paris, was bipolar and was having a manic episode.
“We couldn’t make her do anything, so we called you guys for assistance, and then she just took off,” the emergency medical service worker told Carrocia.
When officers arrived at the restroom, Carrocia can be seen threatening Paris with a taser.
“Do you want to get Tased?” she said, to which the elderly woman replied: “Don’t do it. Why are you doing this?”
The 70-year-old can also be heard pleading with the officer, saying: “Get away from me, get away, get away.”
Carrocia then laughed and told one of her colleagues: “I love my job.”
Paris can be heard saying: “The cops are trying to kill me here.”
The Tulis Police Department said in a statement that the officers were acting within the policies of the department even though it noted that their communications with each other could be “perceived as unprofessional.”
The department hoped to have their Community Response Team, which includes mental health specialists, respond to the call. However, no members of the team were available at the time of the incident.
Officers noticed “that Paris had been spraying an aerosol can and had a lighter” at which point they made a plan to bring another officer and secured a fire extinguisher.
Paris was eventually charged with attempted arson, resisting an officer, assault and battery upon a police officer, cruelty to animals, and trespassing.
The charges were dismissed due to Paris’ mental health.
“Solomon-Simmons Law has been retained to represent Ms. LaDonna Paris, a 70-year-old black great-grandmother and seminary student who was taunted, harassed and antagonized by Tulsa Police Department officers before they brutalized her while placing her under arrest for behavioral manifestations of a mental health disorder in October 2021,” the law firm told KFOR.
“The TPD officers involved were fully aware that Ms. Paris was having a bipolar manic episode, yet they still viciously provoked and attacked Ms. Paris while laughing off her disability as if it were a joke,” the lawyers continued.
“We are disgusted by this outrageous behavior caught on video and the fact that the Tulsa Police Department has attempted to shift the blame for the incident onto the victim of a mental health episode and police brutality.
“We are even more troubled by the Tulsa Police Department’s frequent practice of ignoring and even outright condoning their officers’ discriminatory treatment and humiliation of violence toward people who suffer from mental health disorders, especially African-Americans.”
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