Bodycam Footage Shows Cop Punching Mom Holding 3-Week-Old Baby

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna on Wednesday released “completely unacceptable” body cam footage from a traffic stop in Palmdale, northeast of Los Angeles, a year ago in which a sheriff's deputy punched a mother holding her infant.

The footage, captured on July 14, 2022, depicts a traffic stop in which five officers can be seen surrounding a woman as she refuses to give them her child.

“You're all gonna have to shoot me dead before you take my baby,” the woman can be heard saying.

At least one male deputy can be seen throwing two punches at this woman’s head for refusing to hand over the baby. Ultimately, deputies took the baby and put the woman in handcuffs.

The deputy, who hasn't been named, was taken off field duty and disciplined, though Luna said he could not comment further on what that entailed.

Noting that he sent the case to the district attorney and FBI to investigate, Luna said: "While this incident occurred one year ago before my term as sheriff began, I took swift action after learning about this incident several days ago.”

During the traffic stop, officers saw four females and three infants in the vehicle, none of whom were in car seats. The male driver was arrested for DUI and driving with a suspended license, the sheriff's office said in a press release.

Luna, a former Long Beach police chief, has vowed to reform the Los Angeles sheriff’s department after a string of resurfaced cases tied to excessive use of force.

“I still believe this is an isolated incident that was committed by an individual that will be held accountable, make no mistake about that,” Luna said Wednesday.

According to the Associated Press, the involvement of the FBI in this case comes as other monitoring efforts have been put in place to oversee reforms the department has already agreed on.

The reforms were a consequence of a settled federal lawsuit, in which deputies were accused of excessive use of force and racially biased policing that included disproportionately stopping or searching Black and Latino people.