Crime & Safety

Mom Whose Baby Was Snatched In Social Services Office Sues City

Jazmine Headley, whose arrest went viral in a video online, is seeking damages from officers who ripped her baby from her arms in December.

Jazmine Headley and her 1-year-old son, who was ripped from her arms by officers in December.
Jazmine Headley and her 1-year-old son, who was ripped from her arms by officers in December. (GoFundMe)

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — A Brooklyn mom who had her 1-year-old ripped from her arms at a social services office in December is suing the city for violating her rights in the arrest, which went viral in a video online.

Jazmine Headley filed a 12-count civil rights lawsuit Wednesday against the City of New York and the specific Human Resources Administration and NYPD staff that were involved in her violent arrest on Dec. 7.

The officers had ripped Headley's son from her arms and taken her into custody after she sat on the floor of the Dekalb Job Center on Bergen Street, where she had been waiting for hours to sort out a problem with her daycare vouchers. Headley would end up spending three days on Rikers Island before the charges and a separation order barring her from her son were dropped.

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The arrest had made national and international headlines as advocates and elected officials demanded her release and condemned the violent arrest. Her lawsuit claims that the officers, and by extension the city that hired them, violated her constitutional rights.

"All their pain, humiliation, and trauma could so easily have been avoided if any City employee had paused, found Ms. Headley a place to sit, and checked when her number would be called," the lawsuit says. "Instead of assisting Ms. Headley after her three-hour wait with a toddler, or taking any actions to de-escalate the situation, the responding officers attacked her, ripped her son from her arms, threw her in jail with a restraining order against her own child, and, in the process, upended her life."

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The lawsuit details the trauma that Headley and her son faced because of the arrest, including panic attacks she suffered while on Rikers Island. The days she was imprisoned were the first she and her son, who was still breastfeeding, had spent apart in his life.

Since then, her son's behavior has changed and he has a diminished appetite, separation anxiety, difficulty sleeping and has become more withdrawn, the lawsuit claims.

Headley and her family's privacy was also "permanently compromised," the lawsuit claims, because their names will always be associated with the traumatic experience. Headley said she hopes the lawsuit can help end these consequences from the experience.

"I am taking action so this experience does not fester and infect our lives, work, relationships, and health," she said.

The suit, which specifically names six HRA officers and four NYPD officers, argues that those who yanked Headley's son from her should face "common law" assault and battery charges.

It also levies charges against the city's handling of the Human Resources agency specifically, claiming that the staff routinely mistreat clients, that they are improperly trained and that there is a trail of other lawsuits and incidents that show HRA's "ongoing abuse."

A spokesman for the Department of Social Services, which HRA is part of, said that the agency has made systematic changes since the arrest and will continue to do so.

“While we cannot comment on pending litigation, last year’s incident involving Ms. Headley painfully illustrated that more has to be done to improve the client experience in our centers," Isaac McGinn said.

Among those changes are body cameras, deescalation training, implicit bias training, creating a pilot program to add social workers to the job centers and making it so HRA Peace Officers cannot request the intervention of NYPD without first contacting their higher-ups, the department said.

In the months following Headley's arrest, Commissioner Steven Banks said that the officers involved had either resigned, been suspended or placed on administrative duty.

The NYPD has not announced action against the officers involved since the incident and did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit Wednesday. DSS said that they are working with the NYPD Commissioner to develop protocol between the two agencies.

Headley and other advocates said that they hope the lawsuit can create systematic change to prevent others from going through similar experiences as she did.

"I look forward to re-directing the hurt and anger we feel into more positive outlets for change, such as this lawsuit, protest and community involvement, volunteering for an organization like the Brooklyn Defenders, and joining in a coordinated response to assist others who have experienced abuse,” she said.


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