Woman Deliberately Used Baby as Shield to Avoid Arrest
By Greg B. Smith
New York Daily News
December 17, 2018
NEW YORK -- City peace officers on the scene when a child was pulled from the arms of a mother in an incident caught on viral video say she was verbally abusive, deliberately used her 18-month-old son as a shield to avoid arrest — and bit one of the officers, according to internal agency reports obtained by the Daily News.
Human Resources Administration witness statements from two security officers who were at the Boerum Hill SNAP office for the Dec. 7 incident portray mother Jazmine Headley as intentionally escalating the situation by refusing to follow orders when she was asked to clear the passageway where she was sitting.
The reports indicate there were empty seats in the office — contradicting claims that Headley was forced to sit on the floor because there were no open chairs.
The witness statements also allege that Headley’s child was still in his stroller when the incident started — and she picked him and clutched him tightly to avoid arrest when NYPD cops appeared.
The minute-by-minute written accounts end with the scene captured on the now ubiquitous video that shows an NYPD officer wrestling the child from Headley’s arms as she flails about.
The HRA reports state that during that struggle, Headley kicked an HRA peace officer supervisor in the shoulder and bit a peace officer in the arm.
A photo that sources identified as the peace officer’s arm clearly shows bite marks. The reports state that the peace officer was transported to Methodist Hospital by an EMT crew.
Headley, who went to the HRA center after her benefits were abruptly cut off and says she waited four hours to speak to someone, insists she did nothing to provoke the struggle the ended with her son torn from her arms.
She was initially charged with resisting arrest but the Brooklyn District Attorney dismissed her case. She has since been released from custody.
Mayor de Blasio has criticized the actions of the two peace officers, who have not yet been named but were placed on modified desk duty pending the results of an investigation.
The NYPD officers involved in the incident, including the one who actually pulled the child from Headley’s arms, have not had any change in work status.
The reports provide the first account of what happened in the run-up to the alarming video — and the witness statements say it began shortly before noon on Dec. 7, when Headley allegedly sat down in the middle of the SNAP office passageway after waiting four hours and demanded to be seen by city welfare workers.
She had her son next to her in his stroller, and when HRA workers told her she couldn’t sit in the middle of the floor and that she should take a seat, “Client Headley responded back saying she is ‘not fuckinn’ moving anywhere.”
The reports state that first a private security supervisor hired by HRA tried to persuade Headley to move, but “she became very loud, irate and was using profanity towards the security supervisor.”
The private security supervisor then asked an HRA peace officer to try and calm Headley down “to avoid the situation from getting worse,” but Headley told the peace officer ‘I’m not fucking moving from here,” the reports say.
When the on-duty supervisor of the HRA peace officers asked Headley to take a seat, “She was saying ‘Don’t fucking get close to me. Get out of my fucking face, bitch,” the statements said.
At some point Headley took the child out of the stroller and “began to use her baby as a shield from getting arrested and was telling the officers ‘You better not touch me,’” according to one of the reports.
“The female client intentionally used her toddler son as a shield. He was sitting in his stroller but she took him out once she knew the police were called,” another witness statement alleges.
The reports state one HRA peace officer suggested detaining Headley at that point, but the HRA peace officer supervisor “told her not to due to her holding her son and I was much concern about the safety of the baby and to avoid situation escalating to more serious situation.”
When NYPD officers show up, the officers began trying to pick Headley up from the floor as she clutched her child. The reports do not reveal who called in the police.
“As the NYPD officers were picking her up she began to flare up her arms while resisting,” one of the reports states. “She put the baby between her legs in a tight grip. NYPD officers tried to get the baby off her but she was putting up a fight.”
The HRA peace officer supervisor stated that Headley “kicked me on my right shoulder and (an HRA peace officer) also got bitten on her left arm,” one of the report says.
One of the reports describes the moment the NYPD wrenched the child from Headley in remarkably deadpan terms. “More NYPD officers responded on scene and were able to get the baby off client Headley and she was placed under arrest by NYPD officers and was escorted out of the facility with her child,” it said.
Another praises the NYPD cops’ tactics, stating, “The officers were careful while handling her, not to harm the baby. The female client was the one putting him in a tight hold, grabbing his clothes and even wrapped her legs around his body so that he couldn’t be detached from her.”
In the viral video of the incident that shocked the city, one of the NYPD officers can be seen waving a taser at the crowd of people who’ve surrounded them as they struggle with Headley.
Speaking Thursday on a radio show, Police Commissioner James O’Neill admitted that he found the video “disturbing,” but added that after viewing police body camera footage of the incident, he concluded, “The cops were doing their best to de-escalate the situation.”
Mayor de Blasio has said the city is conducting a full investigation of the incident but has not yet said when the findings will be released.
Calls to Headley’s lawyer were not immediately returned.
EDITOR’S NOT: I cannot see why the fucking Brooklyn DA dismissed the case when the bitch bit and kicked the officers. I guess it’s political correctness run amuck.
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