CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland police officer who faces misdemeanor charges in connection with the arrest of an 18-year-old woman choked the woman and pulled her to the ground by her hair, according to body camera footage reviewed by cleveland.com.

Sgt. Christopher Graham, a 21-year veteran officer with a history of abuse-of-power accusations, is charged with assault and unlawful restraint, both first-degree misdemeanors. He pleaded not guilty to the charges last week.

The body camera footage from Graham and two other officers refutes a statement given to cleveland.com from the woman, 18-year-old Angelina Martinez, that Graham "choke-slammed" her.

The police department's body camera unit allowed a cleveland.com reporter to review the video Monday, but has not yet made the video available to the public.

The Sept. 12 altercation at a Sunoco gas station on West 137th Street and Lorain Avenue took about 40 seconds.

The officers were called to the gas station to investigate a report of two teens fighting. The person who called police said that someone had a gun, but police never recovered a gun. Both teens were handcuffed but later released.

Martinez, a friend of one of the 17-year-old boys, was placed in handcuffs and put in the back of a police cruiser. The video shows her walking out of the gas station and up to the cruiser.

She leaned toward the window of the cruiser. In her interview last week with cleveland.com, she said that she was talking with her friend and telling him goodbye. The body cam does not pick up the sound of what she told him.

But an officer noticed her at the window and yelled for her to step away. Graham is one of several officers who charged at Martinez. Graham got to Martinez first and immediately choked her. The video shows that Martinez struggled to free herself from his grasp.

Graham, who weighs 220 pounds, grabbed Martinez, who weighs 96 pounds, by the hair and pulled her to the ground. Graham then claimed that Martinez tried to kick him in the groin and tells her she's under arrest.

He kneeled on her back and one of the officers handcuffed her as she screamed in pain and insulted the officers. An officer lifted her up and walked her to the cruiser.

Graham signed charges against Martinez for fourth-degree felony assaulting a police officer. She spent five days in jail, and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office eventually dropped the charge before it proceeded to the grand jury.

Police internal affairs detectives investigated the case and found that Graham lied about Martinez trying to kick him and that he assaulted Martinez for no reason. The investigators also wrote in court records that the charges against Martinez were unwarranted.

This is the third time Graham has been accused of abusing police powers.

In 2003, he had two patrolmen arrest his ex-girlfriend on a trespassing charge, despite the fact that the woman lived at the Oak Park Avenue home. The city settled that lawsuit for $14,000.

Two years later, Graham argued with a man over a parking space, pulled his car over, then chased him into a coffee shop and attacked him, according to the lawsuit. He then filed criminal charges against the man for assaulting a police officer. A grand jury rejected those charges. The city paid $7,500 to settle that lawsuit in 2007.

It is unknown if Graham was disciplined for the two incidents.

Cleveland.com has requested a copy of Graham's personnel file from the city's law department. The city has yet to comply with the public records request.

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