Chaumtoli Huq was handcuffed for standing on sidewalk at Times Square.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW YORK: Prominent Bangladeshi American human rights lawyer and activist Chaumtoli Huq, who was the former general counsel for New York City’s Public Advocate Letitia James, has sued the New York Police Department for arresting and using excessive force on her when she was standing at a sidewalk on Times Square, waiting for her husband and two children to use the restroom at a restaurant.
The shocking arrest, which happened in July, and the subsequent lawsuit, was first reported by DNAinfo.
Huq, 42, had just left a pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square on July 19 with her husband and two young children when they stopped to use the bathroom at Ruby Tuesday at 41st Street and Seventh Avenue, said the report.
Huq said she was standing just inches from the front of the restaurant waiting for her husband, Marvin Cabrera, and her 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter when NYPF Officer Ryan Lathrop and another officer approached her and demanded she clear the sidewalk.
“I’m not in anybody’s way. Why do I have to move? What’s the problem?” she told police, according to the criminal complaint, said DNA.
Huq said there was plenty of room for pedestrians to walk between her and the protesters, who were penned in along Seventh Avenue. She said the officers pinned her against the wall, prompting her to say, “I can’t move, I can’t move.”
But Lathrop claimed in a criminal complaint that Huq refused to move when directed to do so. She was arrested.
“At that point I didn’t know what was happening. I was just thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ and all of a sudden the officer flips me [around]…he [turns] my body and presses me against the wall of the restaurant,” Huq said. “He shoved my left arm all the way and kept pushing it and handcuffed me. At that point I just like instinctively yelled, ‘Help!’ because I was alone. I screamed, ‘Help!’”
Lanthrop said in court papers that Huq flailed her arms and twisted her body when he was handcuffing her.
“I’m not resisting arrest. My husband took my kids to the bathroom in Ruby Tuesday,” Huq said she told the officers.
Huq, who was appointed James’ general counsel in December, had just taken a nine-month leave of absence the day before the rally to advocate for improved factory conditions in Bangladesh, she said.
The Daily News reported that James’ office said that Huq no longer worked there. Gothamist reported that she had taken a leave of absence so she could focus her attention on human rights abuses against garment workers in Bangladesh.
Huq, who has a nose ring and was wearing a traditional Indian tunic and pants on the day of her arrest, said she believes officers targeted her because she is Muslim and South Asian, said DNA.
She added that officers went through her purse without probable cause before taking her to the Midtown South Precinct — all while her family was still inside the restaurant. Huq’s husband and children were notified by another officer and eventually came looking for her at the precinct.
Officers offered to deliver Huq’s purse and personal items out to her husband, but then became suspicious when she told the officer his last name was different than hers, according to the lawsuit.
“In America wives take the names of their husbands,” the officer told her according to court papers.
She was held for more than nine hours in lockup before being arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges of obstructing governmental administration, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, court records show.
She said she agreed to have the case adjourned and not get arrested again within the next six months in exchange for a dismissal.
Huq also filed a complaint with the NYPD’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, the CCRB confirmed.
“My civil rights were violated. I think that I was treated differently because of being a woman,” she said. “I think I was targeted once my husband left. I think that I was being targeted based on my religion and my race.”
“I went from being a mother to a prisoner and so I can’t imagine mothers who experience their children or their boys having such an experience with police officers,” Huq said. “That shouldn’t be the case in New York.”
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.”
The Daily News said the 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.
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 of the suit filed by Huq, according to the News, “the matter is under internal review.”