A woman in the United States has settled a lawsuit with the New York Police Department after she went into labour with her wrists and ankles in handcuffs.
Title: Victor Trammell for Your Black World | Photo credits: : Molly Crabapple for The Guardian
Story by The Associated Press
An anonymous black woman who says she was shackled by police for hours while in active labor has settled a lawsuit against New York City for $750,000, her lawyers announced last Thursday.
The woman, who filed the lawsuit anonymously, was arrested for a minor charge in 2018 when she was more than 40 weeks pregnant, she said in the suit filed in Brooklyn federal court. She was handcuffed and shackled during labor and after she gave birth to her son, according to the lawsuit filed by The Legal Aid Society and Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP.
A New York Police Department recently settled with a Black woman who sued the department after she was shackled while she gave birth in 2018.
The woman’s attorneys announced last month that a U.S. district magistrate judge approved a $750,000 settlement for the young mother of two.
NYPD cops bound the woman’s hands and ankles for hours at various points during her labor, and refused to unshackle her even after doctors pleaded for them to remove the cuffs. The officers claimed it was department policy to keep her restrained despite a state law on the books since 2009 that essentially outlawed pregnant women being shackled during childbirth.