Huq was arrested illegally while standing on a sidewalk at Times Square.
By Raif Karerat
A New York City human rights attorney has reached a settlement with the city regarding her civil rights lawsuit after she was arrested last July while waiting on the sidewalk for her family.
Chaumtoli Huq was charged for blocking the sidewalk, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct while waiting for her family to use the restrooms inside a local restaurant. She and her family had been attending a rally in support of Gaza.
Per NBC News:
According to Huq’s complaint, the NYPD officers asked Huq to move as she waited outside a restaurant that afternoon. Huq says she explained her husband and two young children were inside using the restroom, and moved back against the wall “leaving the sidewalk completely clear.” Huq claims the officers then grabbed her, pushed her against the wall, and handcuffed her. During the arrest, the officers allegedly told her, “Shut your mouth,” “You’re my prisoner,” and, when they learned Huq has a different last name than her husband, “In America, wives take the names of their husbands.”
Huq filed the civil suit because she believed that she was targeted as a woman of color and that her arrest was part of a larger pattern of over-policing communities of color, reported NBC News, and over 60 New York civil rights and community organizations signed a joint letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton in support of Huq.
The settlement stipulates that the City of New York will give Huq financial compensation to the tune of $37,500, albeit without any admissions regarding Huq’s civil rights or the City’s policies or practices.
“Being a human rights attorney, I know the legal system does not work for those who have been historically and presently excluded from it, and knew this growing up as a working class immigrant in the Bronx,” Huq said. “But going through the legal system as a client, not the lawyer, gives you a perch from which you see the day to day ways we are asked to negotiate away our rights, and be comfortable with what we get.”
Huq told NBC News she’s disappointed that the City would not agree to a town hall meeting or police training about Muslim and South Asian communities to address larger community concerns, but plans to pursue other avenues to build those bridges.
A mother, Muslim, and Bangladeshi American, Huq is also a a former Associate Professor of Law at New York Law School, former general counsel for New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, Director of the first South Asian Workers’ Rights Project in the country at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the first staff attorney to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.