Daily News – by Dareh Gregorian
A former top lawyer for Public Advocate Letitia James isn’t exactly advocating for the NYPD’s policing practices.
In a blistering lawsuit filed late Tuesday in Manhattan Federal Court, Chaumtoli Huq, 42, says NYPD officers used “unreasonable and wholly unprovoked force” when they arrested her without cause while she was leaving a pro-Palestinian protest in July.
The bust was “characteristic of a pattern and practice of the NYPD in aggressive overpolicing of people of color and persons lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights,” the suit says.
Huq, who says in her lawsuit she’d taken a leave of absence as James’ general counsel to work on factory conditions in her native Bangladesh a day before the arrest, says she believes she was targeted because she’s a Muslim woman.
Huq was wearing a traditional South Asian tunic while waiting for her husband and their 6- and 10-year-old kids to come out from a bathroom stop at Ruby Tuesday’s in Times Square when she was told to leave by an officer, the suit says.
She said she explained she was waiting for her family and then the officer “without any legal basis, grabbed Ms. Huq, turned her and pushed her against the wall and placed her under arrest.”
GOOGLE MAPSHuq was waiting for her husband and two young children who were going to the bathroom inside the Ruby Tuesday’s in Times Square in July.When she said she was in pain, one of the officers, Ryan Lathrop, allegedly told her, “Shut your mouth.” When he found out she had a different last name than her hubby, he told her “In America, wives take the names of their husbands.”
She was held for nine hours after the officers falsely claimed she had refused instructions to move and had “flailed her arms and twisted her body” to make it hard for them to handcuff her, the suit says.
She accepted an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal five days later, meaning the charges against her will be dropped if she does not got rearrested within the next few months.
Her lawyer, Rebecca Heinegg, said her client accepted the plea deal because her planned fellowship in Bangladesh made it impossible for her to fight the charges over a protracted period of time.
Huq’s suit blames the officers’ conduct on “city policies, practices and/or customs of failing to supervise, train, instruct and discipline police officers and encouraging their misconduct.” It also says the department has a “practice or custom of officers lying under oath, falsely swearing out criminal complaints, or otherwise falsifying or fabricating evidence.”
VANESSA A. ALVAREZ/APNew York City Public Advocate Letitia James, left, has called for NYPD cops to be equipped with cameras to record their interactions with people.While the suit describes Huq as being “on leave” from the Public Advocate’s office, a rep for James said she no longer works there, and her last day of work was July 18 — the day before the arrest.
James didn’t comment on the suit, but has been a critic of the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk in minority communities and a proponent of body cameras for NYPD officers — which could have come in handy for this case.
Huq’s suit seeks unspecified damages for her “physical, psychological and emotional injuries, mental anguish, suffering, lost wages, humiliation and embarrassment” — and also retraining for Midtown South cops.
A rep for the city Law Department said, “We will review the lawsuit.”
Huq told the Daily News via email from Bangladesh that she had gone to the rally not “as a lawyer, but as a mom.”
MOHAMMED N. MUJUMDER VIA FACEBOOKHuq says in her suit that an officer who arrested told her to “shut your mouth,” after she complained that she was in pain.“I was hesitant to bring a case. My job is to be behind the scenes, and help all New Yorkers,” she said, but she realized “that I can use what happened to me to raise awareness about overpolicing in communities of color. I want there to be a dialogue on policing and community relations,” she said.
DNAinfo, which first reported on Huq’s arrest, said she filed a complaint about the officers’ conduct with the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
NY1 reported last month that Lathrop is also under investigation by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, which is investigating an incident in which the cop allegedly confiscated the phone of someone who was taping him and then roughed him up.
A NYPD spokeswoman said, “the matter is under internal review.”
“It also says the department has a ‘practice or custom of officers lying under oath, falsely swearing out criminal complaints, or otherwise falsifying or fabricating evidence’.”
Yes, she’s right, and mountains of evidence will prove this lawsuit’s merits, but unfortunately, it’s not going to change a thing.
If cops couldn’t lie under oath, falsely swear out criminal complaints, and fabricate evidence, it would be impossible to harass dissidents. She should have expected to get arrested if she’s championing the Palestinian cause in Jew York City (whose police department has an office in Tel Aviv). You may as well praise Hitler at the wailing wall.
I don’t want to hear anyone’s crying when cops start dropping like flies. Instead of listening to the media’s sob story about a slain officer’s surviving family, remember how many families the pig bastard destroyed by locking up innocent people on fabricated evidence.