A retired schoolteacher says she was treated like Public Enemy No. 1 — when two Parks Department officers roughly handcuffed her and hauled her to a police station for simply letting her little pet Chihuahua run free in a park.
Joan Donohue, 77, says she was just trying to cheer up her rescue pup Herbie three days after Christmas in 2013 with a walk through East River Park, when she decided to give him a little time to frolic off the leash.
“He sat on a pillow for eight months, and he was so depressed all the time that I had this momentary idea: ‘Well, I’ll go in this ball field, and I’ll let him off for a second and maybe he’ll have a moment of happiness of something,’ ” Donohue told The Post.
She said she thought she wasn’t hurting anyone because the park was dark and deserted when she let Herbie go.
“There was nobody anywhere. It was frozen,” she said. “The moment I did it, these two officers said, ‘You’re not supposed to have the dog of the leash,’ and then they said ‘Where’s your ID?’ ”
Donohue put Herbie back on his leash as soon as the officers walked onto the ball field, but they weren’t satisfied, her Manhattan federal court lawsuit states.
“It was just me and them in this frozen ball field . . . There was nobody down at the river,” she told The Post.
“These two guys piled in on me. They took my dog, they took my purse, they took my phone and they handcuffed me behind my back,” Donohue said.
When she asked for her handcuffs to be loosened, the officers spitefully tightened them, the suit states.
“I said, ‘I’m 77 years old, and I have a heart condition.’ And it meant nothing to them,” she said.
The officers took Donohue to the 9th Precinct station house where she was held for several hours before she was released with four summonses — all of which were later dismissed, her suit states.
Herbie, meanwhile, was held at the NYPD animal shelter in Harlem.
“I had bruises, I had post-traumatic stress disorder, I had nightmares, and I still don’t know if I’m through that,” Donohue said.
The city settled Donohue’s suit for $25,674, it was announced on Thursday.
“Ending the litigation was in the city’s best interest,” a city Law Department spokesman said.