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Woman Files Lawsuit Against NYPD
Says cops wrongfully raided her apartment

By Patricia Hurtado
STAFF WRITER

May 28, 2003


An East Harlem woman filed a civil rights suit against the NYPD yesterday, charging that police wrongfully stormed her apartment during a "no-knock raid" similar to the one carried out against Alberta Spruill.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Cynthia Chapman, 40, charges the NYPD terrorized her and her teenage son in a raid shortly before 6 a.m. on April 2.

Chapman, a phlebotomist for a hospital in Brooklyn, said she was getting ready for work in her apartment on First Avenue near 114th Street when she heard a scratching noise at her door.

In an interview yesterday, Chapman said she thought her husband, Bobby, had forgotten his keys.

She said police in tactical gear suddenly burst in with guns drawn and fired a stun grenade, striking her 15-year-old son in the ankle. "They didn't say anything. All I saw next was police in their gear, yelling at me, 'Put your hands up or I'll kill you! I'll shoot you!' They threw me on the floor and put a gun to my head."

The grenade also struck a fish tank, Chapman said.

She charges that a white male police officer ordered her to put her hands in the air and handcuffed her, threw her to the ground and pushed his weight on her left shoulder.

When she denied knowing what the officer was talking about when he repeatedly asked, "Where is it?" Chapman, who is black, said he told her, "I'll kill you" and "I'll shoot you," and put a gun to her head. She eventually overheard that the officers were looking for drugs. She said she and her son were taken away in handcuffs.

After police questioned her for hours, Chapman said, she and her son were released and the police apologized for having the wrong apartment.

In addition to charging that Chapman and her son's constitutional rights were violated and the mother and son were unlawfully detained, the lawsuit also seeks to obtain information from the police concerning the deadly morning raid at Spruill's Harlem apartment May 16.

Chapman's lawyer, James Myerson, further charges that the NYPD policy forces cops to "push the envelope" to make drug arrests, resulting in unlawful and wrongful police conduct.

The corporation counsel declined to comment, saying they hadn't seen the lawsuit yet.

Chapman said she is still traumatized and shudders when she thinks her son could have been killed.

"One day they're going to the wrong apartment and some child is going to think someone is coming to harm them, pick something up and they're going to be killed."
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.