The family of a 15-year-old honor student is suing the city after she was tackled by plainclothes police officers after matching the profile of a shoplifter. Last Friday afternoon, police in the 78th Precinct received a description of shoplifters as "two female black teens, dark hair," one with a ponytail. Brittany Rowley was walking down Prospect Park West with a friend; the two were on the way to the library. Suddenly an unmarked police car appeared. “I thought we were being abducted,” Rowley tells the Daily News. The girls ran, but two officers tackled them. "Why did you fucking run? I should punch you," Rowley says one officer told her.
The suit asks for damages of $5.5 million. “I feel my daughter was racially profiled,” Rowley's father, Delmus says. Racial profiling? At the NYPD? Not on Ray Kelly's watch.
Despite the suit, an NYPD official tells the paper that the incident ended up being an example of "good police work," because the officers obtained surveillance footage that exonerated the two girls, despite the owner of the store falsely identifying them as the shoplifters. Rowley spent three hours handcuffed to a bench at the precinct while the ordeal was sorted out.
The suit against the city and the two arresting officers may just become one settlement out of many that's paid out due to police misconduct. WNYC reports that in 2011, the city paid out $186.3 million in judgments against the NYPD, $50.5 million more than in 2010, and is projected to pay out $180.1 million in the next fiscal year.
