Kentucky Cop Gives Citation to Homeless Woman in Labor

A homeless woman in Louisville, Kentucky, was given a citation for illegal camping while she was in labor and waiting for an ambulance, video obtained by Kentucky Public Radio shows. The police body camera footage shows the pregnant woman under an overpass in late September. "I might be going into labor, is that OK?" she told Lt. Caleb Stewart. "I'm leaking out." She told the officer her husband had called an ambulance. As city workers confiscated her mattress and threw it in a garbage truck, Stewart told her to stop walking away. "Am I being detained?" she asked. Stewart replied, "Yes, you're being detained. You're being detained because you're unlawfully camping."

"You don't have to holler and you don't have to push me," she told him. "I haven't done anything to you." The woman told Stewart that she didn't have a home and the city had impounded an RV she bought to get off the streets, the Washington Post reports. She was issued a citation under a new state law against street camping, reports the Guardian. In the body camera footage, the officer can be heard saying, "I don't for a second believe that this woman is going into labor." Her attorney, public defender Ryan Dischinger, says she gave birth later that day. He says the baby is healthy and the family is now in a shelter.

"The reality for her, and for anyone who's homeless in Kentucky, is that they're constantly and unavoidably breaking this law," Dischinger says. "What she needed was help and compassion and instead she was met with violence." The woman has a court date in late January. Kentucky Public Radio reports that in the body camera footage, Stewart defended his handing of the situation, arguing that if he had let her go without a citation, it would set the precedent that other people could avoid tickets by claiming medical emergencies. "I'm very confident that was the appropriate way to handle it, with the exception of perhaps that maybe I yelled at her a little too quickly when she was in the street," he said. (More homelessness stories.)