Michaella Surat, a 24-year-old woman and former Colorado student, is suing local police for her viral arrest two years ago. According to a report from the New York Post, Surat is suing police for a “violent takedown” and exposing her buttocks in an arrest that occurred after her boyfriend was thrown out of a bar.
She is “seeking unspecified damages on grounds of excessive force and failure to properly train Fort Collins cops.”
Surat claims that she suffered a concussion, cervical spine strain and a large bruise on her chin.
At the time of her arrest, Surat was a junior at Colorado State University and a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority.
In August 2018, Surat was convicted of obstructing a police officer and resisting arrest. For her punishment, Surat was sentenced to one year of probation, community service, alcohol abuse evaluation, and a mandatory “Making Better Choices” class.
“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to deter you from doing this again (aside from) what you already went through,” Larimer County Judge Joshua Lehman said at the time of her sentencing, according to the Coloradoan. “At the end of the day, we’re talking about a few seconds of your life where you made a decision you maybe wouldn’t make now.”
You can check out video of the arrest below.
Seems excessive… pic.twitter.com/vnHAnIUjeE
— Trevor Hartman
(@Trevor_Hartman) April 8, 2017
(@Trevor_Hartman) And here is a view from the police officers’ perspective.
We’ll have to see what kind of result Surat gets in the hearing and whether she has moved on from the days of getting drunk, resisting arrest, and flashing her buttocks to the world.