Woman slammed onto ground by San Bernardino police officer sues city, PD

A woman who was slammed to the ground by a San Bernardino police officer last year when she was a minor has filed a lawsuit against the city and two officers.

Erin Cowser, 18, and her attorneys announced on Friday a lawsuit against San Bernardino Police Department Officer Jackson Tubbs, Officer Cynthia Guillen and the city. The complaint follows Cowser’s arrest from May 21, 2025, in which video captured her being slammed onto the ground by Tubbs, according to her lawyers. She was 17 years old at the time.

According to the lawsuit, San Bernardino police officers were initially called to a report of kids fighting at a Food 4 Less grocery store. The complaint states that Tubbs walked up to Cowser, grabbed her by her backpack, pulled her over to the patrol car and threw her to the ground.

Video captured on a cellphone and body camera footage worn by Guillen recorded the arrest.

“A hip toss that flipped Erin in the air, her legs flying over her head, and she landed face-first, head-first on the concrete,” Toni Jaramillo, one of Cowser’s attorneys, said. “And what’s even worse was that he had her cuffed, her hands cuffed behind her back, so she had no way to brace herself.”

Cowser and her lawyers said she did nothing to prompt the officer’s actions.

They say the then-high school senior was inside the grocery store with friends when another group of young people confronted them. The plaintiff said she was attacked by the group and as she left the store, Tubbs appeared to approach her directly.

The plaintiff recalled feeling her backpack being tugged and then trying to take it off. As she tried to take her backpack off, Cowser said officers were trying to handcuff her.

“Then he told me, he was like, ‘Stop resisting,’ and that was the last thing I remember,” she said. “Then I woke up, I was in the back of the cop car on the freeway. And I looked down, and I seen a bunch of blood on my body, and my chin was still leaking. And he had my phone in his hand, and I looked up and I asked him, I said, ‘What happened to me? Like, what’d you do to me?’ He was like, ‘You fell.’ And then it went black again.”

Cowser said Tubbs later told her she’d been injured by the teenagers inside the store. However, body camera footage attorneys provided from Guillen showed that Cowser didn’t appear to be bloody or injured before Tubbs grabbed her.

The lawsuit did not specify the dollar amount Cowser is seeking from the lawsuit.

Both the city of San Bernardino and its police department declined a request for comment, citing pending litigation.