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Police body camera footage shows Steele forcing Elaine Murriel into a squad car. (Photo: Screen shot of video from Fieger Law Firm)

Less than a year before ex-Detroit police officer Gary Steele made a young black woman walk home in the freezing cold while mocking her for her race in a Snapchat video, he broke the arm of a young black woman after wrongfully arresting her, a new lawsuit alleges.

Elaine Murriel, the woman allegedly injured by Steele, wiped away tears at a Friday news conference as her attorney played body camera footage of the May 2018 incident. The video shows Murriel clutching her baby son as she pleads with officers to wait to take her until her mother can show up for the boy. Steele then proceeds to try to shove Murriel into a squad car.

After a brief struggle, she's heard shrieking in horror that he's broken her arm. Steele then handcuffs her anyway.

Attorneys with the Fieger lawfirm have filed a $25,000 lawsuit against Steele, the city of Detroit and its police department for the incident. A separate suit filed on behalf of Ariel Moore — the 23-year-old at the center of the racist Snapchat episode — names those defendants plus Steele's partner, Michael Garrison. Both men were fired from the Detroit Police Department after an investigation this winter.

"Steele ... should have never have been on the force at the time that he was engaging in the activities that resulted in this lawsuit," said attorney Geoffrey Fieger, noting that the ex-officer was convicted of violently attacking his girlfriend in 2008. "The incidents of racial discrimination and racial profiling and invidious racially motivated incidents is still far too great [in the Detroit Police Department] and it reflects a failure to train and a failure to screen in terms of the continued employment of officers who have no business being on the force,"

The altercation between Murriel and Steele occurred after police were called on a dispute in which she fired a gun. According to Fieger, Murriel was licensed to carry the gun and shot it in self-defense during an altercation with a woman whom she had a personal protection order against. 

The video appears to corroborate that claim to an extent. After the incident, one officer asks, "what the fuck happened" and another responds, "I don't know ... apparently she fucking shot at somebody, he don’t want to listen to the whole story that she requested a PPO on somebody and that there are witnesses that someone tried rob her."

“Yeah even the baby daddy just said that,” an officer replies.

“Yeah and then all this just … happened for no reason.”

Lawyers say an X-ray later determined Murriel's arm was indeed broken. They allege she was given a sling and jailed for four days without additional care before she was released. Eventually, they say, she ahd to have surgey and go through physical therapy, keeping her from her job as a nurse's assistant. All charges against her were dropped.

Feiger alleges "nothing was done to restrict" Steel's activities on the force after the incident. 

Steele was fired along with Garrison from the Detroit Police Department in late February, a month after the pair made national headlines for impounding Moore's vehicle over expired tags and filming her as she walked home. The video included the captions "What Black girl magic looks like" and "celebrating black history month." Steele says "priceless" and "bye felicia" and Garrison mutters "walk of shame."

The suit over that incident seeks $75,000.

The Detroit Police Department could not immediately be reached for comment.