She's a Banker, Owns a BMW and Obama Follows Her on Twitter: But NY Cops Still Threw Innocent Black Woman into Mental Hospital

And then charged her $13k for her trouble.

By Andrew Emett / The Free Thought Project

Harlem, NY — Trapped within a Kafkaesque nightmare, Kamilah Brock endured eight days in a mental hospital with forced injections after NYPD officers refused to believe that she was a banker who owned a BMW. Stripped of her clothes and her dignity, Brock was suddenly released without explanation and slapped with a medical bill that exceeds $13,000. She has filed a lawsuit against the city for violating her constitutional rights and described her ordeal during an on-camera interview on Thursday.

According to her lawsuit, Brock had been driving her 2003 BMW 325Ci in Harlem when she stopped at a red light on September 12, 2014. An NYPD officer approached her car and asked Brock why her hands weren’t on the steering wheel.

“I said I was dancing, I am at a light,” Brock told PIX11. “He asked me to get out of the car.”

Police claim that Brock had been acting irrational, speaking inconsistently, and ran into the middle of traffic. But according to Brock’s attorney, Michael Lamonsoff, the NYPD seized her car because they suspected she was high on marijuana. Although the police did not find any drugs, they confiscated her BMW and took her into custody.

After being detained at NYPD’s 30th Precinct for a few hours, Brock was released without charges. When she asked for her car, officers told her to return the next day to claim it at a substation. Instead of giving Brock her car back the following day, NYPD cops refused to believe that she owned a BMW and placed her in handcuffs before calling for an ambulance.

“Next thing you know, the police held onto me, the doctor stuck me with a needle and I was knocked out,” Brock told NY Daily News. “I woke up to them taking off my underwear and then went out again. I woke up the next day in a hospital robe.”

Brock woke up inside the Harlem Hospital psychiatric ward. For eight days, doctors and medical staff repeatedly injected Brock with sedatives and forced her to take lorazepam and lithium after misdiagnosing her as bipolar and delusional. According to medical records, doctors also repeatedly attempted to coerce her into denying she owned a BMW, was a banker, and has President Barack Obama as a follower on Twitter.

But according to her lawsuit, Brock does own a BMW. She has worked at Citibank, Chase, and Astoria Bank. And the 32-year-old black woman with no history of mental illness actually does have President Obama as a follower on Twitter.

After eight days, doctors released Brock without giving her any explanation. She received a hospital bill for $13,637.10 even though Brock was misdiagnosed and held there against her will. Earlier this year, she filed a lawsuit against the city of New York, the unidentified police officers, and Harlem Hospital for violating her constitutional rights under the Fourth and 14th Amendments.

Given the fact that cops have the legal authority to shoot unarmed people, conduct body cavity searches without reasonable suspicion, detain journalists, and choke suspects to death, apparently throwing sane people into psych wards can now be added to the list.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/shes-banker-owns-bmw-and-obama-follows-her-twitter-ny-cops-still-threw-innocent?sc=fb