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Security Guard Says NYPD Arrested Her For Not Helping Them
By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 3, 2011
Modified Apr 3, 2011
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 3, 2011
Modified Apr 3, 2011
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Yesterday, a third grader sued the NYPD after she claimed police unnecessarily handcuffed and arrested her last year. Now, a private security guard claims that she suffered a broken ankle after police unnecessarily handcuffed and arrested her for not aiding them in subduing a suspect. "I'm not a police officer, just a security guard...I'm not even allowed to step out of the building," Anyeris Reyes told the cops at the time.
Reyes, 22, is a guard at an Audubon Avenue apartment complex in Washington Heights. She told investigators that in the evening on March 19, two plainclothes narcotics cops struggled to subdue a suspect right outside of the building she was guarding. When she didn't help, they turned their attention toward berating her: a cop allegedly scolded her, "You stupid b---h, why didn't you help me?" Reyes says she was repeatedly called a "bitch" by the officers, who arrested her and hauled her to the 33rd Precinct. Before she was transported, she told a cop she was "too short and too heavy" (she's 5-foot-7, 255-pound) to get up into the police van, and an officer told her: "B---h, why should we help you if you didn't help one of our guys?"
She fell when she was trying to get into the van, injuring her ankle, and she says the cops just stood around laughing at her. Her supervisor showed up to tell cops that she was not allowed to step out of the building, and that, "We don't wear bulletproof vests, we don't have weapons. We're not cops." But it didn't matter, and she was issued a desk appearance ticket and charged with "refusing to aid a peace or a police officer," a class B misdemeanor, which sounds a bit like the "Good Samaritan Law" from the Seinfeld finale (and we all know how that turned out).
The commenters over at police message board Thee Rant are split on this one. One said, "a different story if the security guard aided the perp. She didn't do anything wrong. If you think she was wrong, ask any transit cop about the T.A. workers. You could be rolling on the ground with a perp and all they are required to do is call it in. She makes minimum wage and if she got involved her job would have probably fired her." But another wasn't so sympathetic: "Shouldn't fairy tales start with 'once upon a time'? What's much more likely is that this human tank trap was facilitating the 'business' being conducted by being the door conductor for that business. She decided who gets in and out, so either she was helping the perps conduct the operation or failed to allow access to the police."
Tagged
anyeris reyes
broken ankle
nypd
police
security guard
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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