Because Yvelisse DeLeon of Coney Island was due at an interview for a bartending job on the evening of Jan. 25, 2007, she spent part of the afternoon getting herself ready. That process included a trip to Downtown Brooklyn.

“I went down here to get color for my hair,” Ms. DeLeon, 35, testified this month in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. “Jay and Fulton.”

Her boyfriend, Juan Figueroa, drove her to that hair appointment and to a few other errands, and around 4 p.m., they were nearly back home. Just as they pulled in front of their building on Neptune Avenue, she said, a car drew up next to them. Two men, one with a gun, ordered them to get out of their car, she testified. They were police officers in civilian clothes.

One of them tore through the car, she said. He was wearing jeans with “little pockets,” she said.

“He brought out his pocket,” Ms. DeLeon said. “He said, ‘Look what I find.’ It looked like little powder in a little bag.”