Texas woman claims face held in fire ants pile during arrest, sues police | LiveNOW from FOX

Welcome back here on live now from Fox and I do want to take you live out over to the Houston, Texas area. This is coming in from our affiliate there Fox. 26, Houston. and what we're looking at is a news conference That is getting underway This is going to be in relation to a lawsuit that has now been filed in connection with an arrest that was made. Uh, information is fairly limited here, but the lawyers and the victim there who has filed the lawsuit are going to be speaking. This is essentially a Houston area woman who is suing the city of Santa Fe and 2 members of the police department after she claims that officers. held her face in a pile of fire ants during her arrest. in the court document Taylor rogers's names the city of Santa Fe. Santa Fe police sergeants 2 of them also named as defendants. Do you want to pop up the audio as it looks like this is getting underway. rights lawyer. I'm here today. with Taylor Rogers and members of the community. because Taylor Rogers. was stopped by the Santa Fe police and for no reason thrown on the ground right into a bed a fire ants in the middle of the day. and then held their while she's screaming. That there's fire ants on her they put they put handcuffs on her so she can't even brush them off her face. and I just wanted to show you what this case. Is about here you go. this and this is just some of the ant bites because these ant bites. fire ant bites. That is an us here in the South We all know what fire ants are. and we know that actually on occasion. they kill animals and even sometimes they can kill people with enough bites. bites and I stopped at 300. bites. And she can't brush them off her face, and she's asking. she's telling these officers. there's ants on my face and they don't brush them off. This was their punishment. They knew what they're doing. This was no mistake. And so we're here today to uh ask Santa Fe Police Department to discipline its officers we saw the video. we gave gave the media the video clip. and it shows officers, uh, 3 or 4 officers. Just hanging around watching. Well, she isn't a danger you can see she's not armed. She's uh, not a large. uh person. She's a female. and that officer is on top of her She's got her constrained. She got her got the handcuffs on and they're still in the ant bed. Is it Torture? Yeah, that's a strong word, but I call it torture but the people can make up their own mind with the word is. but when the police Hold You Down? In a fire ant bed when you're saying. fire ants ants screaming. And they keep you there. What is that? And the sound of a police department has not disciplined any officer They have accepted this Behavior. Which means that? they're they're probably other situations. where excessive force is used upon. by officers because if if this is okay. to do what they did to tailor. then what else is okay? Is in the face. kicks shootings what else? So over here today to say hey. Santa Fe Police Department get into the 21st century. You need to discipline your officers. And so, uh, we're here today to try to do something about that. by raising awareness. uh to the Santa Fe Police department and we have a few people here. to talk about Uh, police uh technique and so forth and the first 1 will be Shelby Stewart. Oh, sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Okay. Sure. as because according to the the lawsuit. Yes, that's correct. All right. this was in front of the high school. At RJ W. Okay. No, uh, she's not going to uh, talk about the facts of the case because there's an ongoing case about it. Let me let me give you the generalities of it weigh in a circle. right and that was the Santa Fe police? at first and then since yeah, that's correct. There was both uh, ISD Police there and the Santa Fe police and uh, she didn't she never endangered uh, single person at the most. she went in the uh wrong. direction, but and they changed their rules all the time. So it's understandable if she did go in the wrong direction, but they and also they were uh, extremely aggressive and it frightened her. I mean they were pounding on her car and the this 1 officer pulls a gun on her and points it to write at her when she's got her other kid in the child in the car. I mean they're they're creating a dangerous situation like escalating it to the sky and apparently they have no de escalation. uh training here and that's another thing they need Is De escalation training So when she uh apparently for just a short period of time, you know, maybe moved just a little bit all these squads show up next thing, you know, she's taken out of the car when she's not a danger to a single person as a matter of fact 1 of the squad cars runs into her when she's not even moving. totaling your car now, it didn't mean it's smashed the car to Pieces because the car was an older car. So when I say total the the value of the repair would be more than the value of the car. So that is basically uh, what happened And so they put her on the ground once again, and then you know what transpired is what you know transpired. that that's what I want to talk to right because identify ASD sfpd Yes, what time? were they called for? Well, we don't know the fine details of it yet because the reason being is we although we have a there's a civil lawsuit filed there are many protections that the government. has when you even file a lawsuit against the government that the citizens don't have. and 1 is that creates big delays in What's called the discovery process. whereby you don't even get these. uh pieces of information. and and documents and and uh so forth until later. and that's why we're now hearing about it even though this is 244. It's been ongoing. Well, it's I mean the uh the lawsuit there's a 2 year statute of limitations to file a lawsuit and this this particular lawsuit was filed near the end. of the 2 years, So it was only filed late last year. uh, and it was filed in Houston and then it was moved to the Galveston because Galveston has a federal courthouse and it started in Houston and really not much happened there and then it's been moved to the Galveston Courthouse. and then moved to the Galveston Courthouse in January. and you're asking They they did an investigation. in there was no discipline needed out. I mean I mean, this is such a simple 1 look at the video. This is not a he said she said this is what the video said just look at the videos of everything that happened. No danger. Uh, nobody uh, nobody injured except for her know, Uh, I mean there's look at the video There's 4 officers. looking down. You know not excited about anything. while she's had has her face in the ants and the other officer is uh, you know, uh, uh just holding her down in there and saying, if she's saying ants I mean other so it's so obvious now there is this, um, uh maybe uh an old custom above the police. that if you run or disrespect an officer you get excessive force. Shoot it on you and maybe 1 of these officers will and I think that's really what it was is the other Officer says, uh, they just assumed that that first officer knew what he was doing and he's saying oh this woman would ever must deserve this punishment for whatever she did so that's why we're not reacting to it. It's not that they didn't see it or that not they they they didn't realize it. It's that this is the form of punishment you get when you don't, you know, stop immediately or you're disrespecting officer, which is a very archaic form like from the old west and that's why we say get into the 21st century. Santa Fe and if I could just clarify too, you said say officer standing around and he was on the clip. there. It's a shorter clip These are more. Oh, yeah, there's a whole bunch more. Yeah. There's a whole bunch more and and how many F SFP off the exact number I do not know, okay. But they're both there. I don't think they have different rules of engagement. Yeah, they're the same because they're both. licensed peace officers as a matter of fact 1 of them. Some of them might have worked for 1 agency then transferred to the other so they don't change change the Constitution does not change. depending upon which police agency you work for actually SFI. stand back unless they're asking for assistance. That's why I'm asking that's their actual. call. Well, okay. if if that's a if that's a policy, right, but they don't give up their policy not to intervene in other words like if you like let's say there were stat the the police were shooting here and stabbing her. Uh, what what are you saying that you say? Oh, okay. Well, I'm sorry we've turned it over. No, uh, what if you're a police officer on the scene the law says you're required to intervene in unconstitutional Behavior at least by words. I mean, you're not required to tackle the other officer or or punch him, but you you you could say something as hey get that lady out. Hey brush those fire ants off boom. I mean, but they didn't do that. They failed to intervene. Hey, yeah, when I saw it was wrong. and I just didn't. well, I mean you can see on the video they didn't intervene. So whether a person says I didn't intervene or not once again the video is right there where they're not intervening. So. plus you know officers generally stick together. So the first thing they do is they don't start uh saying negative things about other officers if they wish to keep on working. they're saying that they recognize they may not have thought that's what I'm trying to. well. Well then then they need then they need to sub then they need severe training because uh, uh if you put a a woman's face into an ant pile and leave it there and get all bitten up and they don't know that they're not supposed to do that. that is that would be bizarre. And I I don't think they're going to say that. Well, no, No, I'm when you say say on the video, no not on any video. Well, we haven't taken their deposition. and so forth and once again officers don't come come forward. and any 1 of my hundreds of cases even though I've won many cases for excessive force no officer in any of those cases and that's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of officers have ever come forward to me and admitted or to anywhere admitted that what they did was wrong. They stick together till the end. Uh, there's no been no discipline whatsoever. Even though they saw the video. Yes, they are. All right next to work at Santa Fe PDS. They need to comment to you at all. They reached out at all to her anything. No, no any contact tell us about that. No, there's been no contact, but I'm I'm the only the recent lawyer there was a lawyer before and I don't know about all of his interactions in the case. I've been on the case now for a few days. Why did you take over because the other other