A stray-bullet victim says she was held prisoner for five days at a Brooklyn police station because detectives didn’t believe her story about the shooting. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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Takesha Griffin, 35, said she was handcuffed to a bench in the squad room or locked in a filthy holding cell at the 73rd Precinct stationhouse during a spirit-shattering stretch last month. Cops asked her repeatedly if she was ready to cough up the real story.
“They wanted me to lie,” said Griffin, whose lawyer filed a notice of claim on Tuesday. “It was like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ ”
During her lengthy confinement, Griffin said she urinated on herself when no one was available to escort her to the bathroom. She was also denied a sanitary napkin.
The single mother of a 9-year-old boy said she was given a McDonald’s hamburger each day and ridiculed when she complained about the food. One cop sarcastically pointed out that she could order salmon or lasagna from a menu posted on the squad room wall.
“Who treats people this way?” Griffin wondered. “It’s inhumane.”
On her second day in the Brownsville stationhouse, cops continued to give her grief, she said.
“A police officer saw me still sitting there and said, ‘Did your story change yet? I guess you like it here,’ ” she said.
The NYPD’s chief spokesman, Paul Browne, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Arrestees are supposed to be brought before a judge within 24 hours.
Lawyer Sanford Rubenstein said Griffin was victimized twice – first as a crime victim and then by cops trying to coerce her into changing her story so the case could be closed.
“This is something that would happen in a fascist state, not in America,” Rubenstein said.
Griffin’s alleged ordeal began Sept. 3 as she was getting out of a male friend’s Ford pickup truck around 4 a.m. near her apartment in Brownsville.
She heard a “slap” and then felt a burning sensation on her right thigh where her tights appeared to be squeezed into a hole. Pulling the bunched-up fabric, she saw a bullet pop out, followed by spurting blood.
Griffin’s friend drove her to Brookdale University Hospital. Hospital staff saw the wound and called the cops.
A computer check showed Griffin had failed to appear in court for a disorderly conduct summons in 2009 and a warrant had been issued. Griffin was handcuffed to the gurney, and after the wound was bandaged, taken to the 73rd Precinct stationhouse still wearing hospital scrubs.
She said detectives insisted she had been shot during a lovers’ quarrel.
“They were trying to get me to say it was my friend who shot me,” recalled Griffin, who is seeking $5 million from the city.
“He never had a gun,” she said. “I told them he was gay; we had gone to a gay club the night before.”
The friend offered to take a lie detector test and submit to a gunshot residue test on his hands, she said. He was released that morning; she was held.
Griffin’s mother brought her fresh clothes, a turkey sandwich, a newspaper, soap and a toothbrush on Sept. 7.
Criminal Court was in session the entire weekend, but Griffin was not taken to Central Booking until the afternoon of Sept. 8.
Griffin insisted she answered the summons and it was supposed to be dismissed. She was right. There had been a clerical error.
