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Screen grabs + BTS from our latest film for Blue Ridge Community Church.

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CHATSWORTH — “Put the knife down! Put the knife down!”

Martha al-Bishara is 87 years old, about 5′2″ tall, and a citizen of the United States. One day she was at home making a traditional Arabic dish that uses dandelions as an ingredient. When she realized she had no dandelions in her own yard, she went to a a bike trail across the street to cut some dandelions with her small kitchen knife.

While she looking through the vegetation, two police officers arrived and began yelling to her. She doesn’t speak English, so she didn’t know what they were saying, but she smiled at them and started to walk over to them. Then she felt searing pain in her left breast and stomach, and fell to the ground, twitching. They had used a Taser on her.

A little earlier, the police had received a 911 call from that property across the street, a Boys And Girls Club:

“This lady is walking on the bike trail, she has a knife and she won’t leave. She doesn’t speak English. ... She’s outside, there’s no kids around though. ... She’s old so she can’t get around too well, but looks like she’s walking around looking for something, like, vegetation to cut down or something. There’s a bag, too. ... she just bringed the knife onto the property in her hand. She didn’t try to attack anybody or anything. We haven’t closed in our fence in the back yet and she walked through there. ... [She is wearing] A blue dress with a brown Muslim hat-looking thing.”

The police knew that, even though al-Bashira looked like she might have been *gasp* a Muslim, she wasn’t an immediate threat to themselves or anyone else. They also knew that she did not speak English. Nevertheless, they claim their use of the Taser was justified because “she failed to obey numerous orders to put down the knife”... orders they knew she did not understand.

Police Chief Josh Etheridge (who happens to be white) was one of the responding officers, and fully endorses his colleague’s use of force: “An 87-year-old woman with a knife still has the ability to hurt an officer.” He also suggests that al-Bashira was lucky she had only been Tased, stating that deadly force would have been used--and justified--if she had “held the knife in an aggressive manner,” or if an officer had fallen down and she had continued to walk forward, “progressing on top of him.”

When asked why the officers hadn’t simply stepped away from al-Bashira, Etheridge claimed they were only thinking of her safety: “Had the officer backed up down the sloping terrain, he could have fallen and accidentally shot the woman.” It’s a shame their solicitude didn’t continue after Tasing her: “emergency medical personnel were not called and none of the officers told family members Al-Bishara had been Tased.”

Criminal charges are currently pending.

Against al-Bashira.