A 60 year old woman named Lisa Edwards died in police custody following
a hospital visit in Knoxville Tennessee earlier this month,
and now the disturbing body cam footage has been released to the public.
Now, before we show you the video, which is in fact disturbing and
I wanna give you a warning well ahead of time.
Here's the context of what happened.
Okay, so
Edwards flew to Knoxville from Rhode Island on February 4 after feeling ill,
she went to Blount Memorial Hospital where she was released after brief treatment.
Later that same day,
she went in for additional help at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center.
The next morning the hospital discharged her and
after refusing to leave the hospital because she still didn't feel right.
Officers arrived to confront her.
So she originally sought help because she was experiencing extreme abdominal pain
but reportedly wouldn't leave because she insisted that she had shattered her
ankle and needed more help.
Okay, hospital security called the police to have her evicted from the property,
claiming that she was trespassing and she wouldn't leave and
the responding officer decided to arrest her and take her into custody, okay?
So he, along with several other police officers then tried to put
her into a police van, but Lisa who was in a hospital wheelchair
said that she was unable to lift herself into the vehicle, okay?
Now in this portion of the video that we're about to watch,
you'll see Lisa struggling to support herself and
officers repeatedly accusing her of faking her distress.
Again, it's disturbing, I just wanna give you that warning.
Let's watch.
>> No, >> You need to step up.
>> I can't.
>> I can't >> Yes ma'am, you're gonna have to-
>> My ankle.
>> Stop, okay, it's not working.
Okay, just stop.
Okay, we're not doing this.
So we're gonna put you back there.
We're not doing this no more with you.
So quit.
You've been medically cleared so we know better.
I can't pick up dead weight.
She's not using her damn legs.
Listen to me, deal with your mess this morning.
We've already spent too much time on you.
You're gonna get up here in this van, you're gonna go to jail.
We're done with this.
I'm tired of dead weight crap.
So listen, this is gonna be your you're gonna get up and
you're gonna sit here, I'm gonna stuff you in the floor.
So which one do you want it to be?
You're about to happen, you're about to get some more charges,
that's what's about to happen.
>> The stretch is not gonna help you, >> If we can't get you on there,
what makes you think we're gonna get you
>> Uniform going nasty from her.
>> So at one point she tells the cops that she's having difficulty breathing,
asks for her inhaler.
They refused to help her out, and at one point, okay, first,
they insist that she doesn't have an inhaler and
then sarcastically asked if she wants a cigarette instead.
So go ahead and make fun of her while she's clearly in distress but
they thought she was making it up, and look, if I wanna be generous to the cops,
the hospital discharged her and demanded that she leave.
And since she refused to leave, that's when they called the cops, and
the cops showed up and arrested her, right?
Why did the hospital discharge her?
Because clearly she was having issues.
And guess what, later, she died of a stroke in police custody.
So clearly, when she was saying she was in distress, she wasn't lying about it.
So the hospital, in my opinion, is at fault here.
And the way the cops reacted to her callously was disgusting.
But I am wondering if they reacted to her that way because they had assurances from
the hospital that she was safe to be discharged.
>> For sure, that had to do with it.
Yes.
So look guys, context here.
If cops do their job right,
it is a difficult job because sometimes people are faking it.
And so, does that mean they should treat people this way?
No, because guys, I got news for you.
Sometimes they're not faking it.
And so but you see it in all the cop videos that we cover, right?
So again, I'm giving you as much context as possible.
We're not gonna cover the stories where they are faking it.
Those never make it into the news, right?
But since some percentage of them are clearly not faking it when they say they
can't breathe, or they're having a medical issue,
that means it's incumbent upon the police to be extraordinarily careful.
And does that make their job harder?
Yes, of course it does, right?
And they don't know who's telling the truth and who's not.
And yes, it's gonna be difficult for two or
three of you to get her into that chair when she's quote unquote, not help you.
It's turned out that she wasn't helping you cuz she's about to have
a stroke, right?
And she was in a lot of pain and in real bad health situation, right?
So take two or three of you and do it right and treat her politely, by the way,
treat her politely, even if she is faking it.
And I know that's super hard for cops to deal with on a daily basis, right?
Because not everybody is an angel.
And we are not seeing that story, right?
But guys, if you're a cop and
you say, hey, I should be paid a lot of money and I should get this and
I should get that, and I should get the benefit of the doubt, etc.
Well, you gotta earn it by doing a hard job.
And part of that job is to treat everyone like they're human beings.
>> Yeah, and how about give her the benefit of the doubt.
She says she's in pain.
She says she's struggling.
She says she needs her inhaler.
How about instead of denying her what she's asking for?
Give her the benefit of the doubt.
Don't just assume she's lying and get her her inhaler.
And by the way, look, I almost hesitate to go to the next clip because it's really
difficult to watch this.
But she did in fact have inhaler in her luggage.
So you're about to see what transpired in the next clip.
>> Having these breathing problems.
They're there when you're just smoking a cigarette,
you have inhaler, we can't find it.
We've looked everywhere, we can't find it.
>> My God.
>> You do not have an inhaler but
you have six packs of cigarettes, ma'am.
But I don't feel like what do you need your first?
You don't have one in there.
We've already went, what do you need now?
>> In my purse.
>> What's in your purse that you need?
>> Inhaler.
>> You don't have an inhaler in your purse, ma'am.
>> I can't breathe, I'm gonna die.
>> Want a cigarette?
>> No.
>> While she's laying on the ground, the officer who drove the van is heard telling
another cop that Edwards will not fit inside, and
that forcing her into it could have health impacts.
She's saying she can't breathe if she falls over either way and
she can't breathe if she dies, that's on me, I'm not willing to take that risk.
That's what the cop would start saying.
>> Well, they did take that risk and she did die.
So look, thank God this was not racial.
So can I get everybody to focus and
realize that we train our cops to be callous to us.
We train them that way.
This is not an accident, like when you have any other profession,
they don't act this way.
When it's police,
we tell them your lives are more important than the other people's lives.
And the citizens are not that big a deal,
especially if they're poor, keep it real, right?
And somehow, but the other side says no,
magically, the cops are all that way.
And but it's not because of the training at all.
It's not the culture that we teach cops that they're more important
than other people.
>> This is a cocktail of all of the institutional failures in this country,
okay?
Our health care system and how insanely callous that is.
I mean, think about discharging this woman when clearly she is not to be discharged.
Clearly she's struggling with her health.
She's complaining about pain, complaining about her ankle,
complaining about severe abdominal pain.
And it's like, no, no, you're ready to go.
Who knows how long the doctor even looked at her.
>> I don't know how many times you guys have been in this situation, but
I've been in plenty of situations where loved ones had something that the doctors
couldn't find the first time they went to the emergency room, and
it turns out they weren't lying.
They really did have something and they couldn't find it.
So can we please treat each other with a little
bit more care and humanity, etc.
But the folks who should have the most of it in the hospital and the cops,
in this case wind up having the least amount of care and compassion, and
now that person has passed away because of it.
>> Now, while the four police officers are on paid administrative leave,
they will not be facing any criminal charges for what happened.
The district attorney has already made that clear, and
I do wanna just quickly read a statement from the hospital.
The hospital has been in contact with MS Edwards family and
expressed our sorrow soon after their loss.
Although we cannot comment on specific details,
patients are not discharged from the emergency room unless they are stable.
We have just seen the Knoxville Police Department's body cam footage and
are continuing our investigation.
Seems like people do get discharged when they're not stable.
>> There's no one who sees that video and thought that she was stable.