NYPD seizes adorable dog, person too, in retaliation for video-recording in public, attorney-plaintiff alleges

A New York legal aid attorney was arrested, along with her dog, when she started video-recording police, and then she sued for civil rights violation.

Harvey (Compl. ¶ 36)

The NYPD messed with the wrong person. As the complaint tells it, Molly Griffard, an attorney with the Cop Accountability Project of the Legal Aid Society (Equal Justice Works), was walking her dog, Harvey, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn when "she saw police officers remove a young man from a bodega, and drag him around the corner where they lined him up with other young men against a wall."

Griffard began video-recording with her phone. After she crossed the street at an officer's instruction, she started writing down NYPD car plate numbers. An officer refused to give her his business card upon her request, the complaint alleges. Instead, the officer handcuffed Griffard and arrested her, taking her and Harvey into police custody. She was held at the 79th precinct for eight hours, while Harvey, a nine-year-old Yorkie, was held in the kennel.

Admittedly, what caught my attention in the case was not so much the facts, head-shaking inducing as they are, but the story of Harvey. Journalist Frank G. Runyeon, reporting for Law360, and NBC News 4 New York, also were enchanted.

Griffard and her attorney, David B. Rankin, of Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP, must have been conscious of Harvey's intoxicating adorableness, too, because they included gratuitous glamor shots in the complaint—as I've reproduced here. 

Harvey (Compl. ¶ 20)

At its fringe, the case might be said to implicate animal rights, or at least the rights of owners of domesticated animals. Courts in the United States and elsewhere in the world are coming around to the idea that domesticated animals such as cats and dogs have a value exceeding their market worth as personal property, especially in the area of tort damages when the animals come to harm.

Griffard make no such claim, though, rather using Harvey as evidence to demonstrate her emotional distress at being separated from him and being given no information about his whereabouts while they were held—and, between the lines, to tug at the heartstrings and demonstrate the utter absurdity of her arrest and detainment.

One paragraph of the complaint does allege that seven-pound "Harvey was traumatized by the incident and now takes medication to treat his anxiety disorder." And the count of unreasonable seizure points out that "Harvey missed his dinner."

The case is Griffard v. City of New York, No. 512993/2023 (Sup. Ct. Kings County filed May 2, 2023).

Multi-ethnic kid crew fights bloodsucking gentrification

Are you in need of a Stranger Things fix? Season 4 resumed filming a couple of weeks ago.

In the meantime, Netflix's Vampires vs. the Bronx offers delightful diversion.

There have been black vampires and black horror films, but not so much vampire films with human protagonists of color.  Or many colors.  Enter Vampires vs. the Bronx, a welcome addition in the open vein of comedy-horror.

In Vampires, a quartet of talented youthful stars (Jaden Michael, Gerald Jones III, Gregory Diaz IV, and Coco Jones) are residents of a Bronx neighborhood resisting a clandestine vampire invasion.  The characters casually comprise kids of African-American, Haitian, Puerto Rican, and Dominican descent.  Their cultures are not conflated as we get glimpses of their home lives.

The film collects stars and boasts a few subtle send-ups to classic comedy and horror.  An opening cameo by Zoe Saldana is especially apt, as her heritage includes all of Dominican, Haitian, and Puerto Rican roots.  Cliff "Method Man" Smith plays the local priest, who doles out the Eucharist with a steely glare to his troublesome young congregants.  Bronx-native, Dominican-American comedian, Joel "The Kid Mero" Martinez drives the narrative as beloved bodega owner-operator Tony.   

Saturday Night Live actor-comedian Chris Redd and another Bronx-native, Dominican-American comedian, Vladimir Caamaño, get a few of the film's top comic lines as observers of the action in the tradition of Statler and Waldorf, or Jay and Silent Bob. Director Oz Rodriguez also directs Saturday Night Live and is a native of the Dominican Republic.

Vampires vs. The Bronx is built not so subtly on a storyline of urban gentrification.  The Scandinavian-blonde vampire brood seeks to seize local businesses and convert the likes of Tony's bodega to high-end retail and craft coffee.  The vampires are aided by their human familiar, Frank Polidori (Shea Wigham), who brings Italian-mob-style tough tactics to persuade property owners to sell.  Acquiring a building has the spooky side effect of allowing the vampires to enter without asking permission.  

The theme carries through as vampire leader Vivian (Sarah Gadon) stops by the bodega to peruse Tony's growing inventory of new-age super-foods and settles on a purchase of hummus.  If you can't have a sense of humor about cultural stereotypes, this isn't the film for you.

At the same time, don't expect pedantic messaging on race and gentrification to run too deep.  PG-13 Vampires vs. The Bronx means mainly to make fun.  At that, it succeeds.

Here is the trailer.