Truemors
Pamela Brown
A prosecutor on Monday dropped charges against Pamela Brown, known as the Hula Hoop Lady of Granby Street, and police released a video showing her arrest, during which an officer shocked her repeatedly with a Taser.
Last month, Brown, 49, was charged with making excessive noise and assaulting an officer who responded to a noise complaint on the median of Granby Street near Wards Corner, where she hula hoops. Brown suffered a brain injury in 1977 when she was hit by a truck, and she has seizures and short-term memory loss.
The officer, identified in a police report as Nicholas Parks, is on administrative duty pending review of the case, said police spokesman Officer Chris Amos.
Brown appeared before Judge Gwendolyn Jackson wearing gray sweatpants paired with a heather gray sweater. Brown seemed unsteady on her feet, and she said later she had taken medications for seizures.
When asked how she felt about the outcome of the case, Brown said she couldn't remember what the judge said. She pulled out a medical identification card listing her conditions and said she had tried to show it to the officer who arrested her.
The two-minute, 40-second video taken by a camera on the Taser on Oct. 11 confirms that. For most of it, Brown repeats to Parks that her medic alert information is in the back pocket of her pants.
Amos said the video begins after the initial altercation between Brown and Parks - Brown has one handcuff on her right wrist, and Parks' hand is seen holding the other cuff. In a police report, Parks wrote that Brown pushed him in the chest, grabbed him with both arms, and pulled on the radio he had confiscated. After that, Parks wrote, Brown refused to put down the radio or provide her left hand.
In the video, Parks tells Brown again and again to put her hands behind her back. She replies excitedly that she cannot because her arm was fractured and has a pin in it. Her protests are sometimes hard to understand. Brown shows the officer a medallion hanging from her neck.
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