A Texas woman has accused a Santa Fe police officer of having her face pinned down by a pile of fire ants, leaving bite marks all over her head and chest.
Taylor Rogers said the incident happened on August 19, 2021, while she was dropping her son off at school. Rogers claims in a federal civil lawsuit that a police officer ran up to her car and yelled at her to “stop.” She originally filed the lawsuit in July and amended it in January.
According to the complaint, Rogers “panicked and drove the wrong way” in the bus lane. The complaint says Rogers has a mental illness and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder due to past encounters with police.
Another officer arrived on the scene, tackled Rogers to the ground and handcuffed him “so tightly that the handcuffs dug into his skin,” the complaint said. The officers then twisted her legs “with excessive force,” tied her up, and “buried her face in a pile of fire ants,” exposing the plaintiffs' faces and bodies to excruciating pain.
“This lawsuit was filed to ensure that something like this never happens again in the future, because police officers should not be holding citizens who have already been detained and seized in a pile of fire ants. body,” the complaint states.
Newly released body camera footage shared by Rogers' attorney shows her lying on the grass, screaming hysterically.
“Please,” Rogers yelled, telling the officer he had ants on his face.
At a press conference Saturday, Rogers said her arrest “highlights a serious problem: a lack of empathy and human compassion on the part of some individuals in law enforcement.”
Randall Kallinen, the lawyer who organized the GoFundMe on Rogers' behalf, wrote in a statement on the campaign that she had been bitten by fire ants more than 300 times and suffered “tremendous pain.”
Santa Fe Independent School District Police Chief Ruben Espinoza told NBC affiliate KPRC in Houston that the video does not fully tell the story of what happened. Espinoza, the police officer who responded to the school at the time, is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, as well as the police department and the city of Santa Fe.
Rogers said he tried to cut in front of the area where parents were dropping off their children. He told the news station that she was arrested a short time later by another officer, who allegedly drove her car off the road and into grass after the officer turned on his patrol lights.
“She turned her car into a bus driveway where students were being dropped off by buses. That spot in front of the school was very close to where kids were being dropped off. She was determined not to stop. It turns out he was trying to run someone over near the school,” Espinoza said. “So I used my car to stop her car from doing so.”
According to KPRC, the chief accused her of being “erratic and disobedient.”
Espinoza said Rogers was treated with “respect” and “professionalism” during his arrest and there were no visible ant piles.
“She was not abused,” he said. “There were no ants that we could see.”
Espinoza admitted that Rogers yelled about the ants, but told KPRC that he was pulled from the ground seconds after he alerted the officer about the ants.
But the lawsuit says the officers were not respectful and even told Rogers that her son was watching from the car.
“Plaintiff did not want her son to hear her pain, so she remained silent while she was in excruciating pain,” the complaint states.
Kallinen, Rogers' attorney, said he wants the officers involved to be disciplined.
Santa Fe City Manager Alan Thomas told KPRC that he could not comment on the lawsuit, but had previously expressed support for the officers.
