Video shows officer with hands around woman's neck; use of force ruled "justified"

KENOSHA -- FOX6 News has obtained new video out of Kenosha from the back of a Kenosha Police Department squad car -- showing an officer with her hands around the neck of a woman in handcuffs. Kenosha police say what happens off-camera tells more of the story, and justifies the use of force.

This incident happened one year ago Tuesday -- on October 6th, 2014.

Police say the officer seen in the video had to use force to control a combative woman. They say while it may look like the officer was choking the woman, that's not what she was doing.

To get Tieshina Bey into a squad car, Kenosha Police Officer Bridgette Heid had to hold the woman's throat. The woman appears to be handcuffed in the video obtained by FOX6.

"The video doesn`t depict everything. It doesn`t tell the whole story," Kenosha Police Lt. Bradley Hetlet said.

Hetlet says Heid wasn't disciplined -- nor should she have been.

Heid's report states she responded to a disturbance in the parking lot at a McDonald's restaurant on Sheridan Road. The officer wrote that dispatch indicated a man and woman were fighting outside. The man later told Officer Heid the two were married.

The police report indicates Bey kept following the officer when she tried to interview Bey's husband. Heid wrote: "Tieshina started to walk towards me as I told her three times to stop."

The officer says that's when she arrested Bey for disorderly conduct.

The video doesn't show what's happening right outside the squad car as Bey was being arrested -- but Heid said Bey was kicking her legs, thighs and stomach.

"If she`s being kicked, she could`ve backed off, used c-spray or a taser, perhaps," Lt. Hetlet said.

While Bey felt that Heid had choked her, Hetlet says what's in the video isn't a choke.

"We`re trained through the academy that there`s two pressure points in the neck area -- one in the jaw, that`s the hypoglossal, and the other`s the mandibular angle," Hetlet said.

Hetlet says given the resistance in this case, Heid's response was relatively tame.

"In my mind, she was justified in using the amount of force that she did. In fact, she could`ve used more force than she did," Hetlet said.

FOX6 News got the video associated with this story from a source.

Police say Bey never filed a citizen complaint, and court records from another case indicate she's moved to Florida.

FOX6's attempts to reach her on Monday were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, Kenosha police say a separate incident from earlier this year shows they are not blindly siding with their officers.

In January, surveillance video showed Kenosha Police Officer Peter Bisciglia shoving a man inside a Kenosha grocery store during an attempted burglary call.

The officer wrote in his report that the situation was chaotic -- but police say the video told a different story -- that the man simply tried to get the officer's attention by tapping him.

Bisciglia was suspended for 60 days.