08/01/2011
DEKALB COUNTY - A mother says she was afraid for her life when a police officer asked her to expose herself to get out of going to jail.
"He was like ‘let me see your breast.’ He didn't say it like that. I was like what?" Yvonne Ruiz told Channel 2s Tom Jones.
The 22-year-old mother of two says it shocked her when now fired DeKalb County police Officer Jeremy Reynolds made that request after he stopped on her on Interstate 285 near Church Street.
Ruiz had an outstanding probation violation and says Reynolds told her he had a way to help her from going to jail.
"Let me see your breast and I'll let you go," Ruiz says Reynolds told her. Ruiz says she declined, telling the officer she had children and a husband.
"Leave me alone. Don't touch me. Please don't touch me," she says she told Reynolds.
Ruiz told Jones that Reynolds then aggressively frisked her and tried to lift up her shirt. That's when she says she asked for a female officer.
"'Everybody's at lunch so it's just me,'" she says he told her. Ruiz was taken to jail on a speeding ticket and a probation violation.
In the incident report of the traffic stop, it was Reynolds who claimed Ruiz was irate and upset. Officer Reynolds said Ruiz stated several times she was going to say he asked her to expose herself to get out of going to jail.
Ruiz filed an internal affairs complaint. She later found out police accused Reynolds of forcing another woman to have sex during a traffic stop. Reynolds was charged with aggravated sodomy and two counts of violation of oath of office.
- Why wasn't he fired and jailed then?
Reynolds stood quietly in court as his attorney, Jackie Patterson, entered a not guilty plea for him on Monday. Patterson told Jones that the allegations against the former officer are not true.
Ruiz told Jones she felt violated and doesn't want anyone else to go through what she went through.
"I got home and I just took a shower. I just felt so nasty,” she said. Ruiz thinks Reynolds was preying on young Latinos and minorities. She wants anyone else who may have been solicited by Reynolds to be strong enough to come forward and contact police.
