The NYPD has issued a new set of rules for arresting pregnant detainees following a lawsuit against police for allegedly forcing a woman to give birth while her legs were shackled to a hospital bed. But the new rules, which reportedly prohibit leg shackles for pregnant arrestees, have gone into effect 11 years after New York State banned the practice, which lawmakers called "barbaric" at the time.
Under the new rules for NYPD officers, pregnant detainees may be handcuffed behind their backs, unless there are what the NYPD describes as "exceptional circumstances," such as medical emergencies, or a pregnant person "difficult to rear cuff and poses no immediate threat," the new rules listed in the Patrol Guide say. The officer is supposed to notify a supervisor, and the supervisor then determines "if a less restrictive manner of restraint is appropriate and tactically sound."
Those "less restrictive" methods include front cuffing or handcuffing one hand to something stationary. Police officers are expected to consider various factors to determine the "appropriate" level of restraint: safety of all individuals involved, likelihood of the person escaping, what the alleged crime is, the person's behavior, and if the person is late in pregnancy, at risk of falling, or appears to be in labor.
The new rules prohibit any leg shackles on pregnant detainees, according to the New York Daily News. Officers have been instructed to leave the delivery room and cuffs should be removed, the newspaper wrote. (Rules for "hospitalized prisoner" were not posted to the NYPD's website to confirm this specific portion of the rules on Tuesday, and the NYPD did not immediately provide it to Gothamist.)
The rules-change are the result of a settlement between the NYPD and a Bronx woman who went into labor while she was detained. Police officers shackled her wrists and ankles while she was in labor, she alleged in a lawsuit in December 2018. Doctors ultimately convinced the officers to partially remove shackles, but after giving birth, she was forced to feed her baby with one arm while restrained.
Her lawyer Katherine Rosenfeld told Gothamist at the time: "The police misconduct is so degrading and dehumanizing. How someone could treat another person this way is beyond me."
The NYPD settled with the unnamed woman for $610,000 last July, according to court documents.
Rosenfeld told the Daily News the updated Patrol Guide still doesn't go far enough.
"Instead of using state law as a baseline, the Patrol Guide language seems to have been made out of thin air, without any reference to best practices," Rosenfeld, of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, told the News. "The NYPD seems to have fabricated a totally nonexistent problem - pregnant arrestees escaping - and asked someone who knows nothing about the subject to draft something."
State law has prohibited almost all restraints of a detainee about to give birth since 2009, and, per an amendment to the law in 2015, during transportation between facilities while pregnant and within eight weeks after the person gives birth. The 2015 update also banned correctional staff from being in the delivery room, unless requested.
NYPD spokesperson Sophia Mason said in a statement the policy "addresses safety and medical concerns associated with arrestees in late stages of pregnancy as well as the exceptional circumstance of safeguarding an arrestee through childbirth and until their arraignment."
