A woman who sued the city of New York, claiming that law enforcement officials refused to remove the shackles placed on her wrists and ankles while she was giving birth, settled the case.
A woman under the pseudonym Jane Doe, 21 at the time, filed suit in March 2020, and Wednesday, a U.S. magistrate judge for the Eastern District of New York approved a $750,000 settlement. Part of the agreements stipulated that the settlement is not an admission of guilt in the case.
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The expecting mother was arrested Dec. 17, 2018, for a misdemeanor assault that allegedly took place a week before, according to the lawsuit. At the time of her arrest, she was 40 weeks and two days past her due date.
Police disregarded her need for medical attention, and instead “celebrated at a holiday party, even though they knew she was days passed her due date and was evidently experiencing contractions,” the lawsuit alleged.
“That was not my birth plan. I felt like a failure to my unborn because that wasn’t something that was planned for neither of us,” she told CNN. “I just didn’t feel like myself anymore after that. I feel like my memory got taken away. And still I’m in pain.”
The officers who traveled with her to the hospital refused to unshackle her ankles and wrists despite repeated requests from the nursing staff, the suit claimed. They did remove the restraints briefly so the mother-to-be could receive an epidural.
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“The first breath that this baby had on this earth was one born out of violence. That was violence, what the NYPD did to her,” the woman’s lawyer, Anne Oredeko, said. “This lawsuit was meant as a way to give her some type of solace, but there’s no repairing that — money will never repair that. And she cannot get that moment back.”
Another woman made similar allegations in a lawsuit from earlier in 2018, and she settled with the New York City Police Department for $610,000.
