12 Police Officers Harass & Handcuff Homeless Woman for Sitting in Fountain

A friend of QEJ, David Pring-Mill, was in City Hall on July 28th where he witnessed and recorded NYPD harass a homeless woman for sitting in a public fountain. He sent us these photographs, a video, and a write up of the incident and asked that we share them with the public through our website. *Trigger Warning*

On July 28, 2011, a homeless woman sat in the fountain in NYC’s City Hall Park to wash herself (while fully clothed) as well as additional articles of clothing. 12 police officers arrived on the scene. The woman got out of the fountain and sat on the edge of it. The officers encircled her for over half an hour, and then handcuffed her when she tried to walk away.

Full Story (written by David Pring-Mill):

I had heard stories about police misconduct in regards to NYC’s homeless population, but did not witness any such occurrences firsthand until Thursday, July 28, 2011. In the late evening, I strolled through City Hall Park. It was a hot day, and a homeless woman was sitting inside one of the semi-circular pools of water that are adjoined to the sides of the Jacob Wrey Mould Fountain. She was fully clothed, but appeared to be bathing, seeking relief from the heat, and washing some additional articles of clothing. I thought to myself that the sight of a homeless woman resorting to cleaning herself and doing her laundry in a public fountain epitomizes the current state of poverty in America in a profoundly sad way. I felt affected by it, then found an empty bench near the entrance to the park and sat down.

Then the cops arrived. I spotted about five police officers initially. I thought that this quantity was a bit excessive, and I walked over to see what was happening. The officers told the woman to get out of the fountain, and she complied. It looked like two of the officers were then walking away and I thought that they had realized that more officers responded to this call than was necessitated by the circumstances. But then those officers came back. And then another officer arrived. And another. And another. The officers stood and watched as the woman got out of the fountain. She removed the wet clothes that she had been hand washing and hung them out on the fountain edge. One of the officers parked his motorcycle at the scene and nonchalantly leaned against it. After the woman finished, she sat down on the edge of the semi-circular pool as additional police officers arrived. Eventually, there were literally a dozen officers encroaching upon the woman. I say “a dozen” not as a rounded or exaggerated number. I counted twelve, I photographed the incident with my BlackBerry, and my photographs substantiate this count.

As I took the photos, a few of the officers glared at me. Upon seeing this concentrated show of force, people stopped and seemed puzzled as they tried to figure out what was going on. Due to the proximity to City Hall, it is doubtless that some of them must have thought that the large number of officers was provoked by a terrorism scare as opposed to a homeless woman who had been sitting in a fountain. A Canadian couple asked me for directions to the nearest sightseeing tour bus stop, and also inquired about the presence of the officers. When I explained that the large police presence was in response to a homeless woman who had sat in a fountain, they expressed shock and related it to an incident of police brutality that occurred in Canada.

As the events progressed, the police officers proved to be exceedingly more disruptive to the public than the woman had been. She wasn’t violent. She remained seated the entire time. She didn’t shout out any threats. The substance of the conversation was not known to me because she was controlled in her level of voice. She was speaking and was seldom spoken to as the officers gathered around her. It is possible that she was refusing to leave the park, but she had already gotten out of the fountain and at no point did she try to get back into it. Eventually, she stood up to walk away and spoke loudly and with determination. “Okay I’m walking away, I’m leaving,” she said. The officers swiftly moved in and handcuffed her. I hurriedly fumbled to switch my BlackBerry to video camera mode and I filmed her being taken away by the officers. She implored them to state what she’d done wrong and she repeatedly asked for an explanation as she was ushered along. The officers didn’t reply.

If her offending actions consisted of her being in the fountain, why didn’t the officers take her away immediately? Why did they only do so after a standoff that persisted for well over half an hour? I use the word “standoff” ironically. The term denotes that both parties are standing or on some equal ground – this woman was sitting, with wet clothes, while she was surrounded by standing men with guns. If she said anything during the preceding standoff indicating that she might harm others, it wasn’t audible, and it wasn’t at all reflected in her disposition as she was being taken away. She seemed lucid, albeit understandably frustrated, and she articulated rational questions. The sense of panic and indignation in her voice was obviously the result of the officers’ actions. If she said anything objectionable to the officers prior, it may have been the result of the fact that she was surrounded by twelve law enforcement officers after a situation in which her dignity was already compromised. She did not seem to be a threat to herself either. To the contrary, she was concerned about why she was being handcuffed, and in the video, she can even be heard asking about her bag of things. If the officers wish to allege that she was at risk for self-harm, why would a woman seeking to harm herself be concerned about her meager worldly possessions?

The officers put the woman into a FDNY EMT ambulance, and then they shook each other’s hands and congratulated one another on a job well done. It was sickening to see such pride in such a shameful act, in the feat of twelve armed men handcuffing and carting away a frail homeless woman who was trying to clean her clothes. Most of the officers had merely been spectators. They evidently had heard the call over the radio that a woman was caught bathing in a fountain, and they couldn’t resist the novelty of witnessing such an occurrence. They did so at the taxpayers’ expense and were consequently not available to immediately respond to more urgent matters that might have actually required them to be there.

I confronted a police officer and asked, “Excuse me, why was that woman arrested?” The exchange went as follows:

“She was in the fountain…”

“I know she was in the fountain, but she got out of the fountain. You guys told her to get out and she did; she was no longer in the fountain.”

“You don’t understand, this woman, she’s wacko… she’s not thinking right…”

“About ten percent of the American public have mental illnesses. Are you going to arrest all of them, too?” (Note: After getting home that night, I did a search on Google to fact check myself. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, that figure is actually 19.9 percent.)

“She wasn’t arrested. She’s being taken to a hospital,” the officer replied.

Two other officers stepped up beside me and chimed in: “She’s crazy… she’s out of her mind.”

“A regular hospital or a psych hospital? What hospital?” I asked.

“I don’t have to tell you that. That’s all private. I don’t have to tell you her name, that’s private. A person’s medical records are confidential. That’s all confidential.”

“I’m not requesting her medical records…”

“All of this is none of your business,” he insisted, clearly done with my questions.

“It is if it’s a civil rights violation.”

He waved his hand dismissively in my face. Then those three officers walked away, and all of the officers dispersed from the park.

I am left now with troubling feelings about all of this, as well as the palpable photographs and video of the arrest. It is very probable that at some point in time in this city, rowdy teens have played in public fountains, and a drunken businessman or woman has stepped inside of one. Such occurrences probably resulted in those people being ticketed when caught, if not let off with warnings. But this woman wasn’t ticketed. She was intimidated, handcuffed, and forcibly submitted to a psychiatric evaluation at an undisclosed hospital. It seems that she was treated differently because she was homeless. If her offensive action was being in the fountain and such an action legally warranted that response then that response should have happened immediately. Otherwise, it would seem that they handcuffed her and carted her away because they didn’t like the things that she was saying or the way that she came across, even though there were no perceptible indications that she was a danger to herself, a danger to the officers, or a danger to the public. Do we now live in a city in which the police can handcuff and hospitalize citizens for seeming “wacko” during completely medically unqualified assessments in which the citizens are vastly outnumbered and demeaned?

Clearly, action needs to be taken. Homelessness is symptomatic of larger societal problems, and the fundamental issues need to be addressed. Too often in this country, we treat the symptoms of a problem without rectifying the underlying causes of that problem. In some instances, we not only fail to treat both the symptoms and the causes but we actually regard the victims of our society’s ills with something that comes close to contempt. Correcting the underlying causes would require broad reforms and thorough democratic discuss ions, but presently, one thing is readily apparent. An acceptable solution was not at all reflected in these police officers’ decision to infringe upon the freedom of a compliant homeless woman, encircle her in massive numbers, harass and intimidate her, regard her with derision, and subsequently justify such actions by calling her “wacko.” The NYPD is capable of being better than this, and I hope that New Yorkers will urge the department to institute sensitivity training that will prevent such encounters from occurring in the future. If we want to live in a society of compassion in which the freedom of individuals is respected without appearance or social class serving as a prerequisite, then this incident and other similar incidents are in fact our business, in spite of any claims to the contrary made by the police.

- David Pring-Mill, 7/29/2011

pringmill@gmail.com