07 February,2017 06:00 AM IST | | mid-day online correspondent
A 38-year-old hijab-wearing police officer has sued the New York Police Department, claiming her colleagues bullied her by calling her 'terrorist and Taliban', while some others even beat her up
NY cop sues police department for being physically and mentally abused after she started wearing a hijab. Representational Pic
38-year-old Danielle Alamrani has sued the New York Police Department (NYPD). Why? Because Danielle, who joined the NYPD in 2006 and converted to Islam a year later, claims that she was harassed, bullied, and even beaten up, after she began wearing a hijab to work in 2008.
She has also claimed that some of her police officer colleagues even tried to tear the headscarf off her head, media reports have said.
According to her lawsuit, that officers posted images of her at a gun range and started harassing and bulling her and beat her after she started wearing a hijab to work in 2008.
Danielle's lawsuit claims that she was even beaten up by her colleagues
Once she started going to work in head garb, Alamrani's fellow officers retaliated by calling her names like "terrorist" and "Taliban" and telling her "that she should not be a police officer", she claimed in the lawsuit filed in the Manhattan federal court.
Things got so bad that in 2012, she was "physically attacked" by two officers who "attempted to rip her hijab off of her head", the New York Post quoted the lawsuit as saying.
She claimed that fellow officers, including an equal employment opportunity liaison official, screamed "Muslim b''ch" while attacking her and said, "I will punch you in the face".
Alamrani has said that she has social media evidence of the harassment. She collected the evidence in 2015 after a fellow officer posted pictures on Facebook of her in her hijab at the gun range. That prompted her co-workers, who didn't like what they saw, to make comments such as "f''king disgrace." They also called her a "moving target," the lawsuit said.
There is growing Islamophobia in the US
Things didn't improve, but actually worsened after she complained to internal affairs about the FB posts, the lawsuit claims.
Rather than punish the offending officers, the officer who investigated her complaint "retaliated against her by filing a complaint with child services," the lawsuit added.
In addition to be called names, Danielle claimed that she was assigned positions that did not allow her to earn overtime.
