Megan Graham after her release from jail last week. Graham says she was punched in the face by a Federal Way, Wash. police officer.
A woman with mental and hearing disabilities dialed 911 for protection — from a cop's punches.
Megan Graham's face is still black and blue and swollen from the beating when an officer tried to restrain her last Monday.
"I had a concussion. I still have a hard time understanding how things got so out of control, so fast," Graham told local station KIRO 7. "It was a total lack of communication."
Graham was visiting a friend at a Federal Way, Wash. apartment complex when she noticed a police car behind her with its lights flashing. She thought the cop saw her using her cell phone.
"I told the officer I was going to carry my dog 30 feet to a friend's apartment. I told him, hey, you can walk with me," she said.
The officer ordered her to get back in her vehicle from his running car, which she claims not to have heard because of her partial hearing impairment.
Suddenly the officer got out, lunged forward and grabbed her wrist, which she pulled back quickly before calling 911 to ask for help. Then she says she tried to explain that she suffers from disabilities and did not fully grasp what was happening.
"You attacked me before you said anything!" she can be heard saying in the 911 call. "There is no point whatsoever for you to touch me like that, especially with my condition, so how dare you even touch me?"
The officer can be heard saying repeatedly, "You are under arrest."
Graham, who says she was struck in the face three times, now faces felony charges for assaulting a police officer. Her arraignment is set for June 10 at 9 a.m., reported the local Federal Way Mirror newspaper.
The Federal Way police claim that as the officer approached Graham, she squared off in a fighter's stance and tried to hit him, at which point she retaliated.
Graham's friend Deborah Fenwick saw the incident and insists that she was not resisting.
"That woman doesn't have a violent bone in her body," Fenwick said. "She's got a heart of gold.
If she would have understood the officer's commands in the first place, she would have absolutely complied with him."
