Dog Poop-gate: Woman Alleges Beating By NYPD
ROCKAWAY BEACH, N.Y. (CBS 2) -- A Queens woman who said she was brutalized by a pair of police officers and is now taking the NYPD to court.
She said she was roughed up during a clash with police because the officers thought she failed to clean up after her dog.
Anna Stanczyk said showing CBS 2's Dave Carlin her bruises is the easy part. It's talking about how she got them that is tough.
"It's a nightmare," Stanczyk said.
Stanczyk said was walking her 10-year-old terrier mix, Psotka, right outside her apartment building on Shore Front Parkway in Rockaway Beach on Nov. 26 when a police car with two officers pulled up and she was ordered to pick up after her dog, who she said only urinated, nothing more.
"I got a little upset, but I was shocked -- they tell me to pick up what doesn't belong to my dog," Stanczyk told Carlin.
She said as she picked old excrement from some other dog, she protested and that's when the handcuffs came out. In the process her dog got loose.
"I said, 'no! My dog! What about my dog? And I don't want to get arrested," Stanczyk said.
Investigators from Internal Affairs would not talk on camera and the Police Department spokesman did not get back to CBS 2 with a statement, which leaves a line from the criminal complaint to sum up why she was arrested for disorderly conduct -- for something as minor as a dispute over dog excrement:
"By yelling and screaming 'I picked up after my dog, leave me alone,' which did cause public inconvenience."
Stanczyk said there was a good explanation for why she screamed.
"I started to scream for help. Help, help … my dog is going to be killed by a car," she said.
"The moment I scream I feel the punch in my face. They punch back of head, my breast."
While at the 100th Precinct stationhouse it became clear Stanczyk needed medical attention so she said she was brought in handcuffs to Peninsula Hospital, where doctors checked her out.
She said she was in shock and too afraid to tell them who injured her.
"I was scared to open my mouth," she said.
Stanczyk's lawyer said the case against the 49-year-old Polish immigrant housewife will likely be dismissed if she stays out of trouble between now and May.
But she is suing the police.
"If this can happen to me it can happen to other people," Stanczyk said.
