A Muslim NYPD officer has filed a lawsuit alleging that her fellow cops harassed and assaulted her after she converted to Islam. Officer Danielle Alamrani filed the suit last week, seeking an unspecified settlement from the NYPD, New York City, and several individual cops. Alamrani joined the NYPD in 2006, and converted to Islam in 2007, but did not have problems with her co-workers until she began to wear a hijab in 2008.
The lawsuit claims that Alamrani's fellow cops began calling her names like “Taliban” and “terrorist” and telling her to quit the department. In 2012, two cops, Josephine Barone-Baur and Leanna Brown, allegedly physically attacked Alamrani and tried to rip off her hijab. "They were screaming that nobody liked Plaintiff Alamrani…and referred to Plaintiff Alamrani as a 'Muslim bitch' and said 'I will punch you in the face,'" according to the lawsuit.
Alamrani also claimed that supervisors removed her from patrol assignments because her hijab was a safety hazard. The officer reported the harassment and assaults to her supervisors, who did nothing other than move them to another shift.
“The NYPD had the opportunity to show that the people who police us look like the community they police,” said Alamrani's attorney, Jesse Rose. “Instead, they put her to the side and changed her assignment so she was not visible to the public.”
