A woman who was handcuffed by the NYPD during active labor before her son’s birth, as well immediately following delivery, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city, saying the incident made her feel “less than human.”
The woman, known as “Jane Doe” in the lawsuit, said police officers came knocking on her door in December 2018 to arrest her on a minor charge related to a family dispute — a charge that was later dismissed. She was more than 40 weeks pregnant, and two days past her due date.
Over the next day she was in the custody of officers from both Manhattan and Brooklyn, and ultimately detained for hours in a cell in the 75th precinct in Brooklyn, according to the court filing. She claims that she was denied water and medical care, even as she started to feel contractions, and while officers celebrated a holiday party within the precinct.
Eventually, she was handcuffed to a gurney and transported by ambulance to Kings County Hospital. She labored while a wrist and leg were each cuffed to a hospital bed. Police removed the restraints for hospital staff to administer an epidural, but police restrained her again immediately after the birth.
“This is a barbaric, old fashioned, completely unnecessary and outmoded procedure,” said Katie Rosenfeld, an attorney with the law firm Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady, who is representing Jane Doe along with the Legal Aid Society.
“And it should be shocking to all of us that the New York City Police Department is still using shackles on heavily pregnant people,” Rosenfeld said.
The NYPD declined to comment on the lawsuit or answer any questions about the incident and the officers involved. The lawsuit echoes a similar one filed against the city in 2018, after a Bronx woman was shackled to a hospital bed during labor over the objections of doctors.
Rosenfeld said that New York state law clearly bans shackling pregnant women when they are in the hospital, in labor or recovering from labor. She said the woman continued to be restrained even as her son was brought to the NICU with health issues.
“They put shackles on her to walk to the NICU to see him, and they put shackles on her to walk around the hospital to make sure she didn't get blood clots to her ankles,” Rosenfeld said. “Shackling somebody who's just given birth by their ankles so they can walk around is the maybe the most dangerous thing you can do in terms of ambulation issues.”
The woman also had one arm cuffed to the bed while she was learning to breastfeed her son, leaving her with only one arm to nurse and hold him.
Rosenfeld said her client is seeking unspecified damages from the city, and is hoping for policy clarifications -- or better training -- both for police officers and public hospital staff. She said her legal team has written a letter to Health and Hospitals Corporation, the public hospital system, and directly to Kings County Hospital asking them to investigate involving Jane Doe.
“There were certainly some great nurses who told the officers to unshackle her,” Rosenfeld said. “But unfortunately none of the doctors said anything to the police. It was not a universally criticized measure at that time.”
