The Brooklyn mother whose baby was pried from her arms by NYPD officers at a welfare center — an incident caught on viral video — used her child as a “shield” to avoid arrest, was verbally abusive and bit a city peace officer on the arm, according to internal agency reports obtained by the Daily News.
According to witness statements from two Human Resources Administration security officers who were at the Boerum Hill SNAP office on Dec. 7, 23-year-old mom Jazmine Headley intentionally escalated the situation by refusing to follow orders when she was asked to clear the passageway where she was sitting.
There were empty seats in the office, the reports said — contradicting claims that Headley was forced to sit on the floor next to her son, 18-month-old Damone Buckman, 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 up and clutched him tightly to avoid arrest when NYPD cops appeared.
The minute-by-minute written accounts emerged Friday as HRA suspended Toyin Ramos-Williams and Betinna Barnett-Weekes for 30 days without pay. The two agency peace officers had already been placed on desk duty before the suspensions were announced.
Greg Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, the union that represents the officers, blasted Mayor de Blasio for what he said was City Hall’s mishandling of the incident. The mayor on Wednesday placed blame on the two HRA peace officers even though there has still been no conclusion to the ongoing investigation.
“These courageous peace officers were suspended because Mayor de Blasio can not manage New York City or a crisis,” Floyd said. “Instead of waiting for an investigation to conclude, he has decided to use these two peace officers as scapegoats. They are heroes and deserve our gratitude and an official apology from Mayor de Blasio.”
The witness statements begin with HRA and private security trying to get Headley to move from the middle of the floor and 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 f—-n’ 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 f—–g 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 f—–g get close to me. Get out of my fucking face, b—-h,” 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.
Late Friday, NYPD spokesman Phillip Walzak placed the blame for the entire incident squarely on the HRA peace officers’ shoulders.
After a review of NYPD body cameras, interviews with Headley and her mother, “the preliminary review finds that the incident was escalated by HRA personnel and would likely have been avoided without that escalation,” he said.
Following a terse exchange with an HRA officer, Headley had turned “appearing to head toward an exit when the HRA officer grabs Ms. Headley’s arm, resulting in both being pulled to the ground,” he said.
That’s what “initiated the events that appear in the video,” Walzak said, without addressing the fact that one of the cops waved a taser at the crowd while another wrestled the child from Headley’s hands.
“NYPD officers then engage to effect the arrest,” was his vague description of the video finale.
Calls to Headley’s lawyer were not returned.
