A Texas police officer has been suspended after a mother of five claimed she was severely beaten by the cop during an arrest for driving while intoxicated when she was coming home with her kids from a birthday party for her 8-year-old daughter.
Anna Marie Barnes, 34, was arrested and allegedly severely beaten by the El Paso cop in August for reportedly being intoxicated when she crashed her car into a small tree while driving her five children - the oldest who is now 17 years old.
The El Paso woman was charged with driving while intoxicated with children under 15 years of age and resisting arrest during search or transport - but reports show she was not drunk at the time of her car accident.
Her civil rights attorney, Randall Kallinen, told DailyMail.com he has learned that an unnamed officer has been suspended from duty following an internal investigation into the allegations of excessive force.
Anna Marie Barnes was pictured with two massive black bruises around her eyes and a broken nose after she was arrested for allegedly driving while intoxicated and beaten by a cop
An unnamed officer has been suspended after a Disciplinary Review Board sustained Barnes' allegations of excessive force
The Texas Department of Public Safety reinstated Barnes' license four months after her arrest 'due to passed breath or blood results.' She was also deemed 'clinically sober' on the night of her arrest by Las Palmas Medical Center
The case was presented to a Disciplinary Review Board comprised of six civilian community members and six El Paso officers of various ranks. The board found the allegations against the officer to be true and recommended he be suspended.
'The DRB sustained the allegation against the officer and recommended a suspension. Additional information cannot be divulged due to the possibility of future litigation,' El Paso Public Information Officer Sgt. Enrique Carrillo said.
Barnes was driving her SUV home from her daughter's eighth birthday party on August 27 when she crashed around 10pm.
The police report filed by El Paso police said that Barnes smelled of alcohol and resisted arrest. The crash report states that the single mother then attempted to flee the scene of the crash on foot with her children.
She said that she began crying when officers told her that she was under arrest and did not offer her a sobriety test but slammed her to the ground to handcuff her. She claimed the officer then lifted her up and began punching her repeatedly as she screamed.
'He broke the bones under my nose and my nose. It's been painful. It just feels like somebody slammed me into a wall,' Barnes explained at a previous press conference.
Kallinen said that she is still in pain and unable to breathe properly five months later.
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ShareBarnes said her oldest daughter watched as the officers pushed her to the ground to handcuff her before EMTs began checking in with the five young children.
Her attorney claimed that while one of the two responding officers violently beat her, the other 'watched' and 'blocked' the view from El Paso Fire Department EMS.
According to the police report, Barnes began to back away and pulled her arms away to break from the officer's hold when he attempted to handcuff her.
The report states that while she continued to resist arrest, the officer used their leg to knock Barnes to the floor where he proceeded to strike Barnes several times with an open palm to 'gain compliance.'
She stopped resisting after being struck three times, the report notes.
'The way they say it makes you think its okay,' Kallinen said pointing to the officer's admittance of striking Barnes but noted that 'it's not an approved police procedure.'
'But even what they say is already bad enough. Even what they admit is already bad enough,' said Kallinen. Studies have shown 'open palm is just as deadly as strikes with a fist,' he said.
Barnes admitted that she thought she was going to die.
Photographs show the El Paso woman with two dark bruised circles around her intensely blood-shot eyes and smaller bruises on her face after her arrest. Her nose was also broken and needs reconstructive surgery.
Her attorneys also released a photo of Barnes' steering wheel to show that the airbag did not deploy and could not be responsible for her injuries.
A third photo that was shared by her legal team shows a small tree held up with a 2x4 along the sidewalk where she crashed with minimal damage.
A photo shows that Barnes' SUV did not deploy the air bags as her attorney's fight to prove her claims that the arresting office used 'excessive force' and caused her injuries
A photo shows the minimal damage left at the scene of the crash in El Paso, Texas in August
'Not only was she severely injured but now she has all these hospital bills and they're still going forward with the charges even though the DPS has cleared her,' Kallinen said.
Kallinen has since released an emergency room report from Las Palmas Medical Center which confirms that the 33-year-old was 'clinically sober' on the night of her arrest.
Kallinen also shared a letter from the Texas Department of Public Safety that states that Barnes' license was reinstated due to 'passed blood or breath results.'
Barnes claims that she was not offered a breathalyzer test but provided a blood sample to police. She also said had not been made aware that her license had been suspended.
'Now everyone can see that I wasn't drunk,' said Barnes. 'I knew the truth would come out eventually.'
But despite the evidence of her sobriety, the El Paso County District Attorney's Office has yet to drop the charges.
Barnes (bottom) and Kallinen (top left) are building a case against the city of El Paso and the two officers who arrested her last year
The office noted that there are two ways to find a person guilty of driving under the influence: having a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or more or proving that any amount of alcohol ingested had caused the driver to lose the normal use of either their mental or physical faculties.
Kallinen noted that although the DA's office has said that they could proceed with the charges they did not confirm that they will.
'With this set of facts they would have an extremely hard time proving this case,' he told DailyMail.com.
Barnes and her legal team are calling for her charges to be dropped and for all police officers in El Paso to be required to wear a bodycam.
Kallinen claims that nearly all major cities in Texas require all patrol officers to wear a bodycam while on the job and interacting with the public and has called for El Paso to follow suit. El Paso is the largest city in Texas where officers are not required to wear bodycams.
'If we had the body cam there would be no question of what happened,' the attorney said.
The El Paso Police Department said it could not comment at the moment because the investigation remains ongoing.
'This could have been avoided if he knew he was on camera,' Barnes said.
Barnes is working with her legal team to put together a case to file charges against the city of El Paso for their alleged pattern of failing to punish their officers for use of excessive force and the officers who allegedly beat and failed to stop the beating.
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