A pregnant Chicago woman says that a plainclothes police officer punched her in the belly and then unleashed a racist tirade after she and a few friends laughed at him.
Nicola Robinson, who is eight months pregnant, told WFLD-TV that she and others were standing near her apartment building on Friday when they saw police officers fail to catch a suspected drug dealer in a foot chase. The group laughed—thus triggering the incident.
“As I got ready to walk in my building, he punched me on my right side as hard as he could,” said Robinson, who had been holding her 1-year-old son when the officer allegedly began the assault.
“After he punched me he presumed to say, ‘You black bitch, you better be glad I didn’t hit you hard enough to make you lose your f—king baby,’” she said.
Robinson went into premature labor and spent five hours in the hospital under observation.
The attack apparently shocked other officers at the scene, according to Robinson’s sister, Monique Dickerson. “The other two officers who [were] with him were standing there, and they’re looking, like, ‘What are you doing?’ But I guess they didn’t want to say anything,” said Dickerson, who told WFLD-TV that she witnessed the incident.
Robinson said the officer panicked when she pointed to nearby surveillance cameras. She said the building manager told her that the security cameras recorded the assault, but the management company did not respond to media requests for comments.
While the incident is under investigation, the unnamed police officer could be subject to disciplinary action. The Chicago Police Department released a statement saying that it has zero tolerance for such “abhorrent behavior,” according to WFLD-TV.
Read more at WFLD-TV.