NEW YORK — Last week, it former tennis superstar James Blake. This week we find out about Kamilah Brock and her pricey BMW. The common denominator with these two strangers are their horrifying experiences with the New York City police Department. And it is further evidence of a department run amok and leadership that are little more than apologists for debased, unlawful and heinous behavior by rank-and-file officers.
A woman is suing the NYPD and New York after she claims she was forced to spend eight days in a mental health facility and given a $13,000 bill because a police officer didn’t believe the BMW she was driving was hers.
Kamilah Brock, 32, who is a banker, said that police had initially pulled her over at a red light in the Harlem section of Manhattan, and asked her why her hands were not on the steering wheel. Brock told the officers that she was “dancing (to music). I am at a light.
Brock was then ordered out of the car and eventually transported to the NYPD’s 30th precinct where she says she was held for several hours. She was never charged with a crime nor given a citation. But she was told she could not retrieve her car, which they had towed.
Instead, Brock was told to return to pick up her 2003 BMW 325Cl the next day.
When she did return to claim her car, police said they didn’t believe she was the rightful owner of the vehicle.
“I just felt like from the moment I said I owned a BMW, I was looked at as a liar,” Brock told PIX 11. “They put me in handcuffs and said they just need to put me in handcuffs to take me to my car. And I said OK, whatever it’s gonna take to get to my car.”
Brock’s anger and confusion was amplified exponentially with the shocking thing took place next.
“Then EMS approached me. And they said we’re gonna take you to your car. And I’m like, in an ambulance? I’m going to my car in an ambulance? I was just so confused.”
Instead of being taken to her car, Brock was transported to Harlem’s hospital psychiatric ward, where she claims medical records obtained by her attorney, Michael Lamonsoff, show she was forced to take lithium and injected with powerful sedatives and stripped naked.
“He held onto me and then the doctor stuck me in the arm and I was on a stretcher and I woke up to them taking my clothes off, specifically my underwear,” she said in the interview, according to the Daily Mail.
Instead of just verifying if the woman was indeed the owner, thus putting an immediate end to this nightmare — or better yet, preventing this in the first place — Brock’s lawyer said the mental hospital (operating at the behest of the NYPD) spent the next eight days trying to get her to deny she owned the BMW, that she was a banker, and that President Obama followed her on Twitter.
It turns out Brock was able to confirm that she owns a BMW, that she is a banker and that the president of the United States does indeed follow her on Twitter.
“I was looked at as a liar,” she said.
Brock’s lawyer Lamonsoff sounded off to the media, saying that Brock never had any previous mental health issues and that there was only one reason, and one reason only, that Brock was treated the way she was:
“If a white woman was trying to reclaim her BMW impounded by police, would she have been made a victim?” he told the Huffington Post.
“Would she have been questioned? Would she have been subject to sarcastic comments? Would she be made to justify who she was in order to ask for help? I don’t think so. I do think race played a part in this.”
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