A white police officer from suburban Detroit is out of a job after she was caught on tape violently hacking off a young hairdresser’s weave during an arrest in November, the Daily News reports.
Bernadette Najor was fired from the Warren Police Department in Warren, Mich., after the incident, the News says. Najor reportedly had a history of disciplinary problems, including a 2010 suspension for lying to her superiors, WXYZ-TV reports.
The most recent incident began on Nov. 13, when Charda Gregory, 22, was arrested for reportedly destroying a room at the Suez Motel in Warren after a night of partying, WXYZ-TV reports. She told investigators that someone may have put something into her drink, the report says.
At the jail, the young hairdresser allegedly became combative with police, who pepper-sprayed her, the News reports. But she was later cuffed into a restraining chair, even though she had calmed down. As Gregory wriggled in agony, Najor began cutting her weave with a large pair of shears while other officers looked on, video broadcast on the station showed. Gregory's hair was ripped with such force that she suffered some permanent hair loss, her lawyer, Paul Misukewicz, told WXYZ-TV.
Police officers sometimes remove a suspect's clip-on hair extensions during an arrest because they can be used as a weapon or a suicide aid, the station reports. But Warren Police Commissioner Jere Green said Najor went too far.
"I don't buy that's the proper way to treat a human being," Green told WXYZ-TV. "I don't think it's decent, I don't think there was any reason to do it and when I look at it, that bothers me."
Misukewicz said in an interview with WXYZ-TV that the officer "took it upon herself … to butcher my client.
"I guess the best way to describe it would be sadistic,” he continued. “There's absolutely no reason for it. And it's demeaning."
Other officers seen in the video could still be disciplined, Green said.
Read more at the Daily News and WXYZ-TV.