Earlier in March, Dyma Loving, a 26-year-old Miami resident, was brutally manhandled by the same police force she called for help after she was allegedly threatened with a gun by a 50-year-old man.
Shocking footage of Loving’s interaction with police soon circulated online, showing cops dragging the young mom to the ground by her neck and wrestling her into handcuffs as she – somehow – almost calmly verbally protests.
“I wanted to call my kids. I just said I wanted to call my kids. My phone is dead,” Loving pleads with officers as they cuff her.
A black woman Called Miami-Dade Police For Help After A Man Brandished A Weapon and threaten her life. Yet, She Was Arrested for being distraught pic.twitter.com/xQ2vvDZZsW
— Brother Tyrone X (@tyrone345345) March 13, 2019
Since the altercation, Loving has told ESSENCE that she suffers from physical and emotional pain.
“I’ve been crying and sad ever since, like every day. I’ve had to take off work because my body is physically in pain. My elbow is scratched up and really nasty. My forearm is nasty. It’s swollen. I went to the hospital for my neck and my back because I thought he had crushed my throat. I couldn’t talk for three days because my throat was so sore. I can’t even pick up my one-year-old daughter because my arm and my back hurt so bad,” she said.
As a result, a GoFundMe campaign has been launched on Loving’s behalf, to help pay for the medical fees associated with the injuries she sustained at the hands of officers. The money will also be used for her legal representation, and to help provide for her kids, as Loving cannot work due to her injuries.
So far, the GoFundMe has raised $640 of its $10,000 goal.
Loving is being represented by civil rights attorney Justin Moore, who slammed officers for their behavior.
“This incident has been caught on camera and clearly expresses a complete lack of training and supervision of the officers who responded to Dyma’s request for police protection,” Moore stated in a press release
The incident all started on March 5, when Loving and her friend Adrianna Green walked past Fran Tumm’s home. Tumm, 50, allegedly called Greene a “whore”. A verbal altercation broke out, and Green reportedly picked up a potted plant and threw it at Tumm. Tumm escalated the situation further, pointing a gun at the two women.
“He pulled the gun out on me and told me that he would blow my burned Black ass face off my f–king neck. Excuse my French, but those were his exact words,” Loving told ESSENCE.
After the women ran away, the called police to report the incident, only to be painfully reminded that more often than not, Black people are viewed as criminals, not victims.
Officer Alejandro Giraldo, the officer that initiated the brutal assault, has since been relieved from his duties, pending an investigation.
Tumm, for his part, was only arrested weeks after the incident.
Loving intends to file a lawsuit against the officer and the police department for the treatment she received.
“I want [the Miami-Dade Police] to get better training and get psychiatric evaluations done on everybody in the department. Understand people’s backgrounds, where they come from. I feel like if your officer is having a bad day, you don’t send him out in the car. He needs to be sitting at a desk. It’s just certain things that could be done to prevent police brutality from happening,” Loving told ESSENCE.
