Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photo: Courtesy Charles Meacham
Chaumtoli Huq, 42, a Bangladeshi-American attorney who served as general counsel to New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, has filed a civil rights complaint against the city and two officers of the New York Police Department for allegedly violating her civil rights. The complaint claims she was targeted as part of “overpolicing” of people of color using excessive force and lacking in due process.
The case stems from an incident that took place July 19, at Times Square, where Huq, her husband and two children had just finished attending a rally in support of children killed in the recent Gaza conflict.
Huq was arrested by the NYPD while she was standing on the sidewalk, she says, waiting for her kids to return from the rest room at Ruby Tuesday’s. Officer Ryan Lathrop in his sworn affidavit, excerpts of which are in Huq’s complaint, says he was attempting to maintain a crowd of approximately 1,000 people and asked Huq to continue walking down the sidewalk; that she refused to move as repeatedly directed and said, “I’m not in anybody’s way. Why do I have to move? What’s the problem?” and that this interfered with his ability to do his duty. That’s when he attempted to arrest her, and “the defendant flailed her arms and twisted her body, making it difficult to handcuff her.”
Huq, who is on a 9-month scholarship from the American Institute of Bangladeshi Studies, to research labor conditions in Bangladesh, told Desi Talk neither Public Advocate James nor anyone at her office or Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office had publicly denounced her arrest and that she was not sure she would get her job back. A spokesperson from the Public Advocate’s office told Desi Talk Huq no longer works there. “My understanding is that the time period for the absence was so long and once you are taken off the payroll, you are no longer an employee,” the spokesperson said.
“You are my Prisoner?”
Huq called Lathrop’s sworn testimony false, and said she was summarily turned around, pushed against the wall, and handcuffed despite saying she was waiting for her minor children and husband to come out of the rest room.
The complaint says her “rights were violated when officers of the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”) unconstitutionally and without any legal basis seized, detained, and arrested her, a few feet away from her husband and minor children,” and that her rights were further violated “when she was subjected to excessive force and excessively and unreasonably prolonged, unnecessary, and punitive detention,” says the complaint.
While arresting her, one of the officers told her to shut her mouth, adding “You are my prisoner,” the complaint alleges. She was charged with obstructing governmental administration, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, all of which she has denied in her complaint. The NYPD had not replied to a request for comment on the case by press time.
Huq was “among a handful of other top appointments” that Public Advocate James made shortly after taking office this January, City & State reported in January. Now Huq says, despite being in contact with the Human Resources Department at the Public Advocate’s office, “No one’s reached out to me from the Mayor’s Office or from the Public Advocate’s Office,” nor publicly condemned how she was treated.
NYPD’s Image
Huq’s case makes yet another dent in the already damaged reputation of the force in the backdrop of more than a year of bad press including on its targeted surveillance of Muslims till early this year.
In her complaint, Huq calls for cultural training for the city police, one that involves the Muslim community. “The ‘broken window’ policy is really breaking up our communities,” Huq said in an interview over Skype from Bangladesh, referring to the law enforcement effort to catch small-time criminals in a bid to stem bigger crimes. “This officer didn’t know about our community and the community must be involved in designing the training of officers,” she added.
The complaint says “Ms. HUQ’s arrest was based on perceptions of her race, gender, religion, and political affiliation, and not on any violation of law.” Huq, who is a human rights attorney registered to practice in New York, was dressed in a “traditional South Asian tunic” in other words a kurta over pants, at the time of her arrest.
Meanwhile, her July 19 arrest hearing was adjourned on July 24 under what is legally called an “Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal,” in effect meaning that it might be dismissed when the hearing takes place 6 months after Huq’s arrest and nothing will appear on her record.
American Wives Follow Husbands
It was the month of Ramadan when Huq was arrested and taken to a holding cell in downtown Manhattan. From there she was taken to be arraigned at the downtown Central Booking Criminal Court in Lower Manhattan, in all spending some 9 hours in the police lockup.
She was represented by a Legal Aid lawyer as her husband could not get anyone else so late into the night on a weekend. Now she is represented by attorney Rebecca Heinegg.
When her husband and children arrived at the holding cell, the officer reportedly asked her if they were married.
Huq’s husband has a different last name. The officer then said, “In America wives take the names of their husbands.” Huq’s husband is neither Bangladeshi nor Muslim and has a Hispanic last name. Huq was brought up in the United States and came with her parents when she was a year old. She graduated from Columbia University and got her law degree from Northeastern University in Massachusetts.
That weekend was going to be the family’s last few days in the U.S. before it embarked on a new adventure to live for 9 months in Bangladesh, Huq said. “That day I was not a lawyer, I was a Mom. It was a weekend and they separated me from my family,” Huq said. All the excitement over the upcoming trip to Bangladesh was washed away.
Divine Purpose?
On her Facebook page is a picture of Huq handcuffed and surrounded by NYPD blue, bending forward as her arms are behind her. “Looking at it now, surrounded by three big male cops, w/ AO pushing my handcuffed arms upward in a way that I could only walk bent over, losing my shoe while the other gabbed (sic) my arm,” Huq says, it reminded her of how traumatized she was and still is. “I have not been able to sleep properly. That day I was fasting, had not eaten since pre-dawn. In some ways, I was thankful it was Ramadan because I kept a heart dialogue w/divine creator throughout: There must be a purpose. I can only but surrender to the moment for it (sic) be revealed,” she says on Facebook.
Huq told Desi Talk she had decided to file the case after being convinced to do so by family and friends. “Initially I thought that it was a horrible thing but I don’t need to make it my battle. But people told me that if I as a lawyer did not do anything then what about those others who are not treated right.” She said her professional life had been all about helping immigrants with their issues. “And it would be hypocritical if I didn’t do something.” But she implied it was an uncomfortable shift in positions. “You know, it’s my job to be a lawyer, not a client.”