Northwoods officer pleads not responsible to civil rights cost after confrontation at driver’s license workplace | Legislation and order

ST. LOUIS COUNTY – A Northwoods police officer pleaded not guilty on civil rights violations charges Thursday after an April confrontation in a driver’s license office accused of repeatedly beating a woman.

Officer Michael L. Bennett was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in St. Louis for deprivation of rights under the color law. The indictment states that on April 15, Bennett used inappropriate violence by punching someone identified only as ST, “while ST posed no threat to anyone.” ST was injured, the indictment said.

The circumstances coincide with an April 15 YouTube video of a man posing as a police officer removing a woman from the Florissant office.

The five-minute video, titled “Another Day at the Florissant DMV,” begins with office workers trying to get a woman to leave the office. She presses a man in the face, appears to hit him, and then tries to hit the man again.

Another man then intervenes, shows what appears to be a police badge, and tells the woman to leave.

“Let’s go, ma’am,” he says before grabbing her by the neck. Then he starts slapping her face while repeatedly saying, “Let’s go.”

At some point he hits her in the back of the head, throws her to the ground, and slaps her face again while she is lying on the floor and again when she tried to get up. The man then stands over her and refuses to let her stand up and tells her, “Get up again and I’ll knock that out of you.”