VIDEO: NYPD Violently Yanks 1-Year-Old From Mother At SNAP Office
BOERUM HILL – A video showing NYPD officers forcibly tearing a one-year-old child out of the arms of his mother during a physical altercation at the Human Resources Administration/Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) office at 275 Bergen Street last Friday, December 7, is inciting outrage.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams will go to the site at 11:30am Monday morning to demand that the NYPD immediately drop the charges against Jazmine Headley, the 23-year-old mother seen in the video struggling with police.
Here is the video from this morning’s press conference:
The incident reportedly began when Headley and her son sat on the floor of the waiting room of the HRA/SNAP facility because there were no available seats. A security guard exchanged words with Headley, according to witnesses, and the incident escalated into a verbal dispute, the New York Times reports.
Video footage shows four officers from the 84th Precinct surround Headley who is lying on the floor holding her son. She can be heard shouting, “They’re hurting my son!”
One officer is seen violently trying to pull the small child away from his mother. After separating the child from her, while she remains on the floor struggling with officers, the officer holding the child waves a stun gun at onlookers, according to the Times.
The NYPD says that officers responded to a 911 call for harassment, stating that HRA/SNAP security guards told them that Headley refused to leave the office. Headley allegedly continued to refuse the police officers’ orders to leave the premises, prompting the altercation.
Headley was taken into custody and charged with resisting arrest, acting in a manner injurious to a child, obstructing governmental administration, and trespassing, according to the Times. She refused medical treatment at the scene for herself and her son. Her son is currently in the care of a family member while Headley is being held without bail at Rikers.
An investigation is ongoing.
Borough President Adams has denounced Friday’s incident as an “example of excessive policing” and is calling for reforms to the NYC Human Resources Administration and the NYPD.
