A woman is claiming a Montreal police officer broke her arm in a possible case of racial profiling.

The incident happened in November 2014, Majiza Philip said, when she was at a concert at a downtown club with a friend. The club's management asked her friend to leave because of excessive drinking, and police soon arrived to write him a ticket for loitering.

Police then put her friend in the back seat of the cruiser, so she knocked on the window to let her friend know she had his jacket.

“At that moment this huge tall officer just came and started pushing me, pushing me violently, pushing me back,” said Philip.

Philip said she told the officer he was violating her rights. She claims he then grabbed her and pushed her face down onto the back of his car.

“My arm just gave out and he pulled my arms behind me back and I heard a crack when he hit me,” said Philip.

Philip said she was handcuffed, thrown into the back of another cruiser and when she begged officers to release the cuffs because her arm was broken, was instead laughed at.

She was taken to a police station for processing and then brought to St. Luc hospital, where X-rays showed her left humerus bone had in fact been snapped.

Philip is now taking legal action against the police, saying she lost her job as a cook because of the broken arm.

The official police report of the incident is very different. It says the police tried to take the jacket from Philip, but she resisted and hit the officer, leading to her arrest.

Philip has been charged with interfering with a police operation and resisting arrest.

Fo Niemi, the executive director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, says violence during arrests are an ongoing problem.

“We have to look at one of the most unresolved issues right now: the use of physical force,” said Niemi. “More importantly the use of physical force when dealing with people from the black community.”

Philip says that she might never feel safe around police again.

“If I see them I get nervous. My heart races. I'm just scared pretty much.”