The complaints come amid growing unrest over the department's ability to impose internal discipline. Under increased scrutiny, NYPD faces bias complaints from Muslim New Yorkers

Three Muslim New Yorkers accused the NYPD of excessive force and neglecting crimes against them in new complaints filed with a civilian oversight board, as the department faces national scrutiny over the death of Eric Garner.

A Brooklyn woman charged that after a traffic stop, where she asked to be searched by a female officer because of her religion, police threw her to the ground and kneeled on top of her, with one officer putting his hands around her neck.


“I was thrown to the floor and beaten to the ground like an animal,” said Rayhanah Alhanafi, who said she was stopped last month while driving in Harlem on suspicion of having fake license plates. “I was screaming and crying because I couldn’t breathe. I have asthma, and ... I was in a lot of pain.”

Her complaint was one of three filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ New York chapter with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, alleging biased policing.

The complaints come after an NYPD Inspector General’s report found that the NYPD did not substantiate a single bias complaint, despite nearly 2,500 such complaints being filed. They also come amid growing unrest over the department's ability to impose internal discipline — with five years having elapsed since Garner's death and no official decision yet on the fate of Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who put Garner in a department-prohibited chokehold.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been asked multiple times about Garner during his bid for the White House, has insisted the department has undergone extensive re-training on how to deescalate conflicts with New Yorkers. Advocates have complained that despite reforms to reduce searches and unnecessary arrests, the city has failed when it comes to accountability for officers who commit misconduct.

“The NYPD should not be policing itself,” said Ahmed Mohamed, the litigation director at CAIR New York. “There is a larger pattern of the NYPD failing to investigate properly when the victims are black, immigrant, Muslims, brown individuals in this city.”

Alhanafi said she was repeatedly denied medical attention while in police custody. She went to the emergency room after her release and suffered a hairline fracture in her neck. She was charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

In another case, a woman charged that police failed to investigate after she was brutally beaten in an anti-Muslim hate crime.

Fatoumata Camara said she resorted to investigating her own attack — getting local businesses to give her video footage of the assault — after the NYPD closed her case.

Camara, who is of Guinean descent and was wearing a hijab, said she was attacked and robbed by a group of teens who broke her nose after getting off a bus in the Bronx. The teens called her a "dumb black bitch" and referred to her hijab as a "stupid headrag," according to the complaint.

The case was reopened after Camara turned over video, but NYPD officers have said it will not proceed because the Bronx district attorney will not prosecute an assault where the victim cannot identify her attackers, the complaint says.

In a third complaint, a 16-year-old Bengali American from Queens charges he was sucker punched by an adult man, leaving him hospitalized for three days and requiring surgery. The family and attorneys at CAIR say police dropped the case when the alleged victim, Abrar Chowdhury, could not identify his attacker.

“We’re here to tell the NYPD that these lives matter,” Mohamed said at a press conference outside police headquarters. “We ask them to protect and serve all communities, not just the communities that they prefer.”

Asked about the complaints, NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said Thursday that the department’s hate crimes task force is the largest in the country.

“I’m proud of the work they do, day in and day out, and I’ll leave it at that,” he said.