A Bronx teenager was awarded $45,000 from the city of New York after an NYPD officer arrested her and one of her friends on their way home from school in 2013. Then only 17, the young woman says the cop was throwing some weak lines her way and got upset when she wasn’t quite interested in picking up what he was putting down…
MailOnline: Natalie Erlich, 19, from the Bronx, won the payout from the city last week and charges stemming from the incident were dropped, according to the New York Post.
Erlich, who was 17 at the time, told the newspaper that she was grabbing an after-school snack with two friends in November 2013 when plainclothes officer Jose Peinan and another cop approached them. She said that he tried to strike up a conversation with her by noting that her camouflage hat and his camouflage pants matched, she told the Post.
‘I brushed him off and I laughed,’ she recalled.
When she left, the officer followed her and he tried to continue speaking with her. She asked him if he was a cop and he accused her of blowing his cover.
A van pulled up and Peinan ordered other officers to take her into custody. When she asked why she was being arrested, he responded: ‘You know why – you’re being a smartass.’
She and a friend were searched and taken to the police station. The two women were charged with Obstruction of Governmental Administration. She was released at 11am the next day.
‘I was scared,’ she told the New York Post. ‘I didn’t know what was going on.’
Erlich filed a lawsuit against Peinan and the city, claiming the cop was ‘angered at having his advances rebuffed’, court documents said.
The city agreed to settle and the charges have been dropped.
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