From: bulldog23x@gmail.com   
      
   Woman Says She Endured 8 Days In Psych Ward Because Cops Didn't Believe BMW   
   Was Hers   
      
      
   "I do think race played a part in this."   
    20 hours ago | Updated 18 hours ago   
   Christopher Mathias National Reporter, The Huffington Post   
       
   PIX11   
   NEW YORK -- Kamilah Brock says the New York City police sent her to a mental   
   hospital for a hellish eight days, where she was forcefully injected with   
   powerful drugs, essentially because they couldn't believe a black woman owned   
   a BMW.    
   In her first on-camera interview about her ordeal, which aired Thursday, the   
   32-year-old told PIX11 that it was all a "nightmare."   
   It's a nightmare, Brock's lawyer told The Huffington Post, that never would   
   have happened if she weren't African-American.     
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   Brock sued the city earlier this year in the U.S. District Court for the   
   Southern District of New York. She contends that her constitutional rights   
   under the Fourth and 14th Amendments were violated and that she suffered   
   "unwanted and unwarranted    
   intrusion of her personal integrity, loss of liberty [and] mental anguish."    
   The suit details how Brock pulled up to a traffic light in Harlem on Sept. 12,   
   2014, the music on her car stereo playing loudly. An NYPD officer approached   
   her and asked why she was driving without her hands on the steering wheel,   
   according to the suit.    
   "I said I was dancing, I am at a light," Brock told PIX11. "He asked me to get   
   out of the car."   
   For unclear reason, Brock contends, she was taken into custody and transported   
   to the NYPD's 30th Precinct, where she was held for a few hours before being   
   released without being charged with any crime. She said she was told to come   
   back the next day to    
   pick up her car, a 2003 BMW 325Ci.   
   When she showed up at a police substation to get the car the next day, Brock   
   said, "I just felt like from the moment I said I owned a BMW, I was looked at   
   as a liar. 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."   
   "Then EMS approached me," she continued. "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'm going to my car in an ambulance? I was just so confused."   
   Brock was taken instead to Harlem Hospital, where medical records obtained by   
   her attorney, Michael Lamonsoff, show she was injected with powerful sedatives   
   and forced to take doses of lithium.   
   "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," Brock tearfully recalled for PIX11's Nicole Johnson. "Then I went   
   back out again. When I woke up    
   the next day, I felt like I was in a nightmare. I didn't understand why that   
   was happening to me."    
   Medical records also show that over the course of her eight-day stay,   
   personnel at the hospital repeatedly tried to get Brock to deny three things   
   before she could be released: that she owned the BMW, that she was a   
   professional banker, and that    
   President Barack Obama followed her on Twitter.    
   The lawsuit says it was these three assertions that were the basis for the   
   city determining that Brock was delusional and to diagnose her with bipolar   
   disorder.    
   But according to Lamonsoff, Brock had no history of mental illness. She did   
   own the BMW. At the time, she was employed as a banker and had worked at   
   Citibank, Chase and Astoria Bank. And Obama does follow Brock on Twitter, just   
   as he follows 640,000    
   other people.    
   When Brock was finally released from the hospital, the lawsuit states, she was   
   slapped with a $13,000 medical bill.   
   A white woman would not have been treated like that, Lamonsoff argues.   
      
   COURTESY OF MICHAEL LAMONSOFF   
   "If a white woman was trying to reclaim her BMW impounded by police, would she   
   have been made a victim?" he said to HuffPost. "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."   
   Institutional bias against African-Americans is well-documented and   
   contributes to the racial disparities in how laws are enforced. Just this   
   week, James Blake, formerly the fourth-ranked men's tennis player in the   
   world, was tackled and handcuffed at a    
   midtown Manhattan hotel by police officers who confused him for a suspect in a   
   crime. Blake, who is black, suffered cuts and bruises and was detained for   
   about 15 minutes, until officers realized who he was.    
   "In my mind, there's probably a race factor involved, but no matter what,   
   there's no reason for anybody to do that to anybody," Blake said after the   
   incident.   
   Responding to Brock's lawsuit earlier this summer, the city claimed in court   
   filings that she had been "acting irrational, she spoke incoherently and   
   inconsistently, and she ran into the middle of traffic on Eighth Ave" during   
   her encounter with police.   
   Lamonsoff told HuffPost that "those allegations are without merit" and that   
   "the true facts of what happened that day will be brought out" through the   
   litigation. The lawsuit, which names the city of New York, unidentified police   
   officers and Harlem    
   Hospital as defendants, seeks unspecified damages.   
   Neither the NYPD nor the City Law Department, which handles lawsuits filed   
   against the city, responded to a request for comment on Friday. Previously the   
   police department has only confirmed that Brock was taken into custody.     
      
      
      
      
   http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/55f2c9aae4b063ecbfa3e60d?ncid=fcb   
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