“The steps that we said we would take that would mitigate the horrible things that happened to Ms. Headley have been taken,” Steven Banks, the social services commissioner, said in an interview on Friday.

Ms. Headley had taken the day off from her job cleaning offices on Dec. 8, 2018, to go to a public benefits office in Boerum Hill. She wanted to find out why the city had abruptly stopped paying for day care for her son, who was 1 at the time.

Unable to find a seat in the office’s crowded waiting room after about three hours, Ms. Headley sat on the floor next to her son’s stroller. When security guards told her to leave, she asked to speak with a supervisor.

When she walked away from the guards, they and police officers who had been called in grabbed her. She was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, acting in a manner injurious to a child, obstructing governmental administration and trespassing.

“By the end of the day, Ms. Headley had been humiliated, assaulted, physically injured, threatened with a Taser, brutally separated from her son, handcuffed, arrested, and jailed — all by employees of the City of New York,” her lawsuit said, noting that the guards and police officers should have been trained in how to defuse such situations.

Mr. Banks acknowledged that there was more to be done to cut down the long lines in benefits offices that can fuel tensions between city workers and those who depend on public assistance.