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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. () — A Los Angeles civil rights attorney is suing on behalf of a 17-year-old girl who claims a San Bernardino police officer attacked her and body-slammed her to the ground.
Attorney Toni J. Jaramilla shared a video of the incident outside of a Food 4 Less store after school in May 2025.
PREVIOUS REPORT: Viral video shows officer body-slam teenage girl during arrest in San Bernardino
The department says the teen began to walk away during her arrest. Her family says police targeted her, treating her as if she had done something wrong.
The attorney says her client had walked out of the store after other teens were bullying her. Bodycam video provided by the attorney appears to show the officer drive up as several people were in an argument outside of the store. The officer then grabs the teen, Erin Cowser, from behind by the backpack and pulls her away.
Police say the teen was being arrested for trespassing and trying to fight others.
The lawsuit alleges the police officer slammed her face-first onto the ground, knocking her unconscious and causing a traumatic brain injury. Cellphone video of the incident provided by the attorney shows Cowser bleeding from the face after the officer took her to the ground.
The lawsuit claims the teen lost consciousness and suffered a traumatic brain injury with memory loss, a deep facial laceration requiring stitches and resulting in permanent scarring, as well as wrist and back injuries. It goes on to claim that the officer then repeatedly lied about how she was injured, telling the teen’s family that her injuries were caused by other juveniles.
“I was in the back of the cop car on the freeway, and I looked down, and I seen a bunch of blood on my body, and my chin was still leaking,” Erin Cowser recalled. “And he had my phone in his hand, and I looked up, and I asked him, ‘What happened to me? What did you do to me?’ And he was like, ‘You fell.’ And I went black again. And I remember waking up in the hospital.”
Cowser’s attorney claims that even after the officer admitted to lying during a use-of-force investigation, the San Bernardino Police Department never publicly corrected its account of the investigation.
“This was not a mistake — it was violence, followed by dishonesty,” Jaramilla wrote in a press release. “A police officer took a petite, unarmed teenage girl, with her hands behind her back, and hip-tossed her like a rag doll, face-first onto the concrete. He then lied about it. When the truth surfaced, the police department still refused to correct the record. This lawsuit is about accountability and ending a culture where violence is excused and the truth is buried.”
Eyewitness News reached out to the San Bernardino Police Department for comment, but the department said it is unable to comment on pending litigation.
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