Footage Shows Heavily Pregnant Woman Thrown to Ground by Police

Questions are being asked in California as to why an innocent eight-months pregnant woman was thrown to the ground and brutally arrested, after the scene captured on the body camera of one of the attending officers was published on social media.

Police were called to the scene in January after a white woman complained of an altercation with mother-of-one Michelle Cooks involving the two womens’ cars as they dropped their children off at school.

In the footage, published on YouTube by human rights group American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the car is not damaged.

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“I don’t see a crime to have been committed,” the officer is heard to say to the blond woman. However, the officer then approaches Cooks, who at this point had just left her second grade daughter at school, and demands that she gives him her name. When she refuses to show her ID, which is legal in California as long as you are not suspected of a crime, the officer grabs her.

In CA, you have the right to refuse to ID as long as you're not suspected of a crime or arrested. #MichelleCooks http://t.co/asymnTJzpK

— ACLU SoCal (@ACLU_SoCal) May 29, 2015

“Please, I’m pregnant!” Cooks screams repeatedly, clearly distressed, as she is flung to the ground and handcuffed.

“(The officers treated me) like an animal, a monster,” Cooks, who was charged with resisting arrest, told CNN. A judge later dismissed the case.

“This is how it is everyday for some of us in the Black community,” Cooks’ attorney Caree Harper said. “And the only difference is the technology that records it and the internet that projects it.”

The woman's arrest was wrongful, ACLU attorney Jessica Price told television news channel CNN.

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"It's pretty horrifying," she added. "A lot of people are going to look at this and going to say there is some level of racial profiling and bias going on here."

The city of Barstow police department has denied racial profiling, but has launched an internal investigation after the release of the body cam video.

"This incident was in no way racially motivated, as implied by the ACLU," the city told CNN in a statement.

The incident is one of many making national headlines, as U.S. police brutality and institutionalized racism reach catastrophic levels.