'I'm still very angry': Video captures police officers mocking woman with Down syndrome
A family is asking for disciplinary action to be taken against two Toronto police officers who were captured on video making offensive comments about a young woman with Down syndrome.
Speaking to CP24 Monday, the woman’s mother, Pamela Munoz, said the incident occurred in November during a traffic stop.
Munoz said she was driving with her daughters Francie and Yasmin when an officer pulled her over and gave her a ticket for allegedly making a left-hand turn on a red light. When she told the officer that she planned to fight the ticket, he told her it was all on video captured on the cruiser’s dash camera.
Munoz recently obtained the video through disclosure and she said was listening to it at work when she realized there was also audio on it.
“That’s when I heard all of the derogatory terms they (the police officers) used to describe Francie. You know, that she was a half person, disfigured… that he would be using the word ‘artistic’ to describe people that are different, meanwhile laughing, making fun in between,” Munoz said. “We were very hurt. I was absolutely enraged.”
Munoz said it was especially upsetting to hear those words coming from police officers.
“That is something we have always told Francie. The police, you will trust them. If you are ever in trouble, you need help, these are the people you go to and then you hear something like this and she’s not going to feel comfortable maybe approaching a police officer,” Munoz said. “We definitely don’t want this to upset her anymore.”
She said she hopes the officers face some type of disciplinary action and added that Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders had reached out to her family.
'I'm still very angry': Video captures police officers mocking woman with Down syndrome | CTV Toronto News
A family is asking for disciplinary action to be taken against two Toronto police officers who were captured on video making offensive comments about a young woman with Down syndrome.
Speaking to CP24 Monday, the woman’s mother, Pamela Munoz, said the incident occurred in November during a traffic stop.
Munoz said she was driving with her daughters Francie and Yasmin when an officer pulled her over and gave her a ticket for allegedly making a left-hand turn on a red light. When she told the officer that she planned to fight the ticket, he told her it was all on video captured on the cruiser’s dash camera.
Munoz recently obtained the video through disclosure and she said was listening to it at work when she realized there was also audio on it.
“That’s when I heard all of the derogatory terms they (the police officers) used to describe Francie. You know, that she was a half person, disfigured… that he would be using the word ‘artistic’ to describe people that are different, meanwhile laughing, making fun in between,” Munoz said. “We were very hurt. I was absolutely enraged.”
Munoz said it was especially upsetting to hear those words coming from police officers.
“That is something we have always told Francie. The police, you will trust them. If you are ever in trouble, you need help, these are the people you go to and then you hear something like this and she’s not going to feel comfortable maybe approaching a police officer,” Munoz said. “We definitely don’t want this to upset her anymore.”
She said she hopes the officers face some type of disciplinary action and added that Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders had reached out to her family.
'I'm still very angry': Video captures police officers mocking woman with Down syndrome | CTV Toronto News