A model known for her trademark hair is suing the NYPD,
claiming they falsely arrested her outside a Brooklyn dance club.
Cipriana Quann, a 27-year-old fashion blogger who runs the
site Urban Bush Babes with her identical twin, said she was “aggressively
shoved” by an NYPD lieutenant while heading into the nightspot Verboten in
Williamsburg with some friends May 2, according to a Brooklyn federal lawsuit.
Officers were already on the scene arresting a drug suspect,
but Quann said she had nothing to do with the buy-and-bust operation.
She said she tried to explain that she wasn’t involved to
one of the cops, identified in court papers as Stephen Conforti, but he got
more aggressive with her.
“Can you please watch where you are pushing? I am a woman,”
she said, according to the papers.
Quann — who has appeared in Vogue magazine and was called an
“influential millenial” in a 2013 Gap ad campaign — said she was promptly
frisked out and then handcuffed “extremely tightly,” according to court papers.
Quann was held in police custody for 24 hours on disorderly
conduct charges, which her lawyer said she “reluctantly” copped a plea to land
a conditional discharge. She had her case dismissed last month.
Court papers say she suffered “fear, embarrassment,
humiliation, emotional distress, frustration, extreme inconvenience, anxiety,
loss of liberty and harm to reputation” from the incident over the spring.
She is suing the NYPD for unspecified damages.
A city Law Department spokesman said the complaint would be
reviewed.
24 hours for reasonable remark? The lack of respect for
women is not appropriate for police or anyone else - especially considering
that Cipriana Quann did nothing wrong. The lack of respect to people is a major
problem of American cops. How can police support security and order when they
are so rude and so fast to escalate the violence? It’s okay for cops to
threaten innocent people and even to kill or beat them. I hope Quann’s lawsuit
will be satisfied. Anyway the manner of policing should be changed.
