Body camera footage obtained by Kentucky Public Radio shows that as Lt. Caleb Stewart walked closer, the woman yelled, “I might be going into labor, is that okay?”
Her water had broken, she said. “I’m leaking out,” she told him. She grabbed a blanket and a few personal effects as a bright orange city dump truck pulled up to remove the makeshift bed.
The woman had no phone. She said her husband went to call an ambulance, so Stewart called one for her. But as she walked toward the street to wait for help, Stewart yelled at her to stop.
“Am I being detained?” she asked.
“Yes, you’re being detained,” he shouted. “You’re being detained because you’re unlawfully camping.”
Stewart was enforcing a new state law that bans street camping — essentially, a person may not sleep, intend to sleep, or set up camp on undesignated public property like sidewalks or underneath overpasses. He has issued the majority of the citations for unlawful camping in Louisville.
“So I don’t for a second believe that this woman is going into labor,” he said.
He returned to find the woman sitting on the ground, with legs askew and labored breathing, waiting for the ambulance. Stewart hands her a citation, and she balls it up and tosses it aside as the ambulance arrives to take her to the hospital.
“You’re all horrible people,” she said, as she got to her feet. “I’m glad y’all got this job to f*** with the homeless and not help society.”
Later that day she gave birth to her child, according to her attorney, Public Defender Ryan Dischinger. He said both the woman and her son are healthy three months later, and the family is now in shelter without assistance from LMPD or the court system.
“The reality for her, and for anyone who’s homeless in Kentucky, is that they’re constantly and unavoidably breaking this law,” Dischinger said. “What she needed was help and compassion and instead she was met with violence.”
Now, she’s waiting for a late January trial date on her citation, which could carry a fine and requires the people charged with street camping, who are mostly homeless individuals, to appear before a judge.