Woman Punched by Cops Was on Probation

Wildwood mayor says 'we're not dealing with an angel here'
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted May 29, 2018 3:05 PM CDT

A Philadelphia woman denies spitting on an officer before she was arrested Saturday and punched in the head at least twice, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. "The cops smashed my head into the ground when he tackled me and I spit the sand out of my mouth," Emily Weinman told reporters in a Facebook message. "So no, it is not true." A viral video shows the 20-year-old being arrested on the beach in Wildwood, NJ, and sparked rival accounts of what happened. Weinman admits she refused to tell officers her name and asked if they couldn't do something besides bother underage drinkers; she had alcohol, she says, but hadn't been drinking. Police say she kicked an officer in the groin and spat on them before an officer tackled her.

Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano sides with the cops: "She's a combatant," he says. "Sometimes police have to do what they have to do to stun them." A former bouncer, Troiano says women "can be hard to control. They're kicking, they don't care. ... Look I don't care who you are and what you are, the worse people [to subdue] are women." He claims police body cam footage will tell "a whole different story" when it gets released. Per court records, Weinman is on probation after entering the home of a woman she thought was seeing her ex-boyfriend and attacking her in 2016. The lawyer who represented her in that case says it was unlike Weinman: "Whatever happened in the first case seems to be an anomaly in her personality," he tells the Daily News. (More New Jersey stories.)

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