The NYPD has settled with a trans activist following an altercation that allegedly led to their wrongful imprisonment and the forced removal of their prosthetic leg, according to documents obtained by them.
Late one balmy Friday in August of 2019, Shannon Lumpkin — a 42-year-old trans-media artist and organizer — was heading home to their Brooklyn apartment when they stopped to adjust their prosthetic leg, an action that resembles a slightly more involved form of tying one’s shoelaces. After growing up in Tucumcari, New Mexico, where Lumpkin spent long afternoons herding cattle as a child, they moved east to New York City to pursue a career in film.
In 2014, they were diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer typically seen in children and young adults. They survived the cancer, although not without undergoing an amputation of the lower half of their right leg. From time to time, and especially on sweaty summer nights in New York, they will sit down on the sidewalk to reposition the prosthesis.
That night, however, Lumpkin says their squat apparently struck someone nearby as suspicious enough to warrant calling the cops. “They thought I was urinating on the sidewalk,” Lumpkin tells them. of the encounter with onlookers. Suddenly, Lumpkin says, a burly NYPD officer was hurtling in their direction.
“It was the speed at which he approached that made me realize I was in danger,” Lumpkin says.
Lumpkin recalls trying to explain to the officer that they were just tending to their prosthesis. As they remember it, the officer replied, “Get your hands out of your pockets,” before moving to within inches of their body. Then, Lumpkin says, the officer shoved them, sending their 110-pound body flying across the sidewalk. After falling for “what felt like 15 minutes,” Lumpkin says, they crashed into the pavement.
“He just pounced on me,” they say. “It felt like he wanted to hurt me.”
They allege the officer and his partner pinned Lumpkin to the concrete under their knees. They yelled for their leg as they felt the connective fixtures of their prosthesis begin to buckle. Once in police custody, their leg was gone; one of the cops had ripped it clean from the rest of their body, according to Lumpkin’s Notice of Claim against New York State.
The next thing they say they recall is riding in the police car without the slightest idea of where the bottom half of their right leg had been taken.
“I only had one leg in the car,” they say. “When we got to the precinct, [the officer] took me out of the car, still with one leg, and dragged me on a long walk.” According to the claim reviewed by them., Lumpkin was moved “from precinct to precinct” by the arresting officers and was “deliberately dragged […] along the floor and [officers] did not allow [Lumpkin] to walk, refusing to return the prosthetic leg” to them.
Lumpkin would be wrongfully arrested under false claims of attempted larceny of a police baton, according to the claim. None of the accusations made against Lumpkin included the allegation of public urination, which was the purported reason the officers were called to the scene.
“From beginning to end, the force the officers applied was just without reason,” Jae Oh, the lawyer who represented Lumpkin in their claim against the state, tells them. “At the very worst, this was a person urinating in public, which they weren’t. There was no reason for all of this violence.”
In October, Lumpkin and their lawyers confirmed a settlement with New York State for an undisclosed sum, according to documents reviewed by them. The Notice of Claim sent to the New York City Comptroller settlement included accusations of “excessive force,” “wrongful arrest,” “negligence,” and “deliberate indifference” related to Lumpkin’s disability.
“Unfortunately, as a civil lawyer, we couldn’t do more than make sure Lumpkin received financial compensation,” Oh says. “But at least the settlement sends a message to the city, to the police department, and hopefully to the officer himself that somebody needs to be held accountable for this kind of behavior. Somebody needs to pay.”
