Jazmine Headley was arrested at a Brooklyn benefits office after she refused to stand up from the floor

Prosecutors have dropped charges against a woman whose baby was wrenched from her arms while she was arrested by New York police officers after video footage of the incident went viral.

'Appalling' video shows NYPD officers wrenching baby from mother’s arms Read more

A judge on Tuesday ordered Jazmine Headley, 23, to be released from jail, where she has been locked up since Friday.

Headley was arrested at a Brooklyn benefits office, in a chaotic scene where officers wrestled her one-year-old son away from her, and has been locked up ever since. The Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, said he was dropping charges against her.

“Like everyone who watched the arrest of Jazmine Headley, I was horrified by the violence depicted in the video and immediately opened an investigation into this case. It is clear to me that this incident should have been handled differently,” he said.

Headley had gone to the office of the city’s human resources administration to resolve a problem with a voucher to pay for daycare for her son, where she waited for four hours and sat on the floor because there were no chairs available, her lawyers and witnesses said.

Security guards told her to stand up, and called police when she refused.

The Brooklyn district attorney said an HRA security officer “escalated the situation” when Headley was about to leave the premises, “creating an awful scenario of a baby being torn from his mother”. Two HRA officers have been placed on leave and will be put on modified duty when they return to work, the agency says.

Headley had been charged with trespassing, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and acting in a manner injurious to a child.

“The consequences this young and desperate mother has already suffered as a result of this arrest far outweigh any conduct that may have led to it: she and her baby have been traumatized, she was jailed on an unrelated warrant and may face additional collateral consequences,” Gonzalez said. “Continuing to pursue this case will not serve any purpose and I therefore moved today to dismiss it immediately in the interest of justice.”

The dismissal of the charges means that an order barring Headley from seeing her son, Damon, has also been lifted, according to her lawyers at Brooklyn Defender Services. Her mother has been caring for the boy while she has been locked up at Rikers Island.

Headley remained incarcerated after the dismissal of the charges because of an outstanding warrant from New Jersey, for a misdemeanor credit card crime.

But she’s set to be released Tuesday evening after a judge granted an emergency petition from her lawyer. She was ordered released without bail, the legal aid group said.

Sign up for the new US morning briefing

The video has sparked outrage, and New York politicians rallied on Tuesday afternoon to condemn Headley’s treatment. The NYPD has launched an investigation.

“She told me this is the worst day of her life when this happened,” said Lisa Schreibersdorf, the founder of Brooklyn Defender Services, who joined the rally outside City Hall before heading to court to argue for Headley’s release. “Jazmine had a job. Jazmine wants to work. She said, ‘All I want to do is be able to go to work.’”

The New Jersey warrant stems from a 2016 arrest when Headley was a passenger in a car in which a different person was found with stolen credit cards, the lawyer said. A warrant was issued after she missed court appearances in the case.

New York Attorney General-elect Letitia James said she had contacted Mercer County, New Jersey prosecutors to ask them to dismiss the warrant.

“The answer to this should not have been the police. The answer to this should have been a chair,” she said.

Laurie Cumbo, the majority leader of the City Council, called for the police officers involved to be fired.

“I have a 16-month-old son, and I can’t imagine,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “I would have fought just as hard as she did to hold on to my son if that had happened to me.”

A fundraising page has been launched to raise money to help Headley pay for childcare. It had raised nearly $15,000 as of Tuesday afternoon.