The Bronx Defenders announced Tuesday that the NYPD agreed to pay $125,000 to their client Cheyenne Lee, who accused nine officers from the 42nd Precinct of unlawfully entering her apartment and falsely arresting her and her teenage cousin.
“The NYPD had no right to barge into my house, illegally arrest me, and terrorize my family,” Lee said in a statement issued by the Bronx Defenders.
“We all have the same human rights to be safe and secure in our homes, but police trampled those rights when they broke into my home without a warrant and fabricated reports to justify their abuse and violence against me and my family,” said Lee, who is of Black and Native American ancestry and was born and raised in the Bronx.
NYPD payouts like the one received by Lee are an alarmingly high expense for the city; the Legal Aid Society reported that NYPD misconduct lawsuits cost the city $121 million in 2022.
And according to City Comptroller Brad Lander, payouts for tort (wrongdoing) claims against the NYPD accounted for 34% of the city’s total overall cost for tort claims in 2022.
A settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by the NYPD.
The Bronx Defenders did not offer a comment by press time, and the NYPD Law Department declined to comment for this story.
Dec. 3, 2021
According to the complaint, on Dec. 3, 2021, Lee was in the apartment she lived in with her uncle, Pedro Perez, Sr., who cannot read and write, and his son, Pedro Perez, Jr., who has a mental illness. In their shared home, Lee assisted her relatives and handled many household tasks.
On that day, an argument broke out between the uncle and his son, and a neighbor in the building called 911 to report that Perez, Sr. may have been assaulted by his son. The neighbor noted that no weapons were involved and no ambulance was needed.
Nine officers of the 42nd Precinct responded to the scene. Perez, Sr. insisted that everything was fine, but officers entered the apartment without…
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