A teen girl and a cop shattered the window of a Downtown Chinese restaurant during an altercation that left the youngster and her best friend in handcuffs last Thursday afternoon, cops and witnesses said.
The two 15-year-olds were hanging out with a group of friends at New China Star on Lawrence Street around 3:50 pm when two school safety agents walked in and a manager asked them to make all of the 15-20 rowdy kids inside leave, police reported.
One girl, a Queens high school student, told police that she was waiting for her food order and that she did not want to go, according to witnesses.
Her buddy, a scholar at Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, started to leave, but officers stopped her and began questioning her, said Ta Kim McCollum, who was ordering with the crew.
The officers yelled, “Get out,” according to witnesses, four times, according to authorities.
Two cops then threw the Brooklyn kid to the ground and started slamming her face on the floor, bloodying it, bystanders stated.
The Queens girl, enraged, tried to pull the male officers off of her chum and three other officers tackled her, then sat on her, according to a witness and intimate of the youngster.
“[The Queens teen] is my ex so I wanted to attack the cop but I didn’t,” the witness said. “I just stood there and cried.”
Two cops tried to lead the Queens girl out the door, witnesses said. She stopped near the front of the restaurant and they tried to shove her forward, but instead one smashed her into the picture window, shattering it, and tumbled into the falling glass after her, the witness and cops said.
Cops then led the girl, bloodied and dusted with broken glass, to a waiting police van.
“Where’d my best friend go?” the cuffed teen yelled, blood streaming down her face.
Officers followed with the best friend in tow, also cuffed.
The youths who remained were upset that the bloodied girl was held in the back of the van for 20 minutes while she screamed for medical attention.
“You’re f—— late,” McCollum yelled when an ambulance arrived after cops had driven her away.
The schoolgirl who crashed through the glass suffered gashes on her face and lower back and was treated at Kings County Hospital Center before cops released her, police stated.
Three officers were also injured in the melee, including one who was cut across his forehead and left eyelid and another who needed five stitches on his hand, according to cops.
Cops charged both girls with trespassing, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest and released them into their parents’ custody.
In an interview with the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, the injured girl admitted to refusing the cops’ initial orders and resisting arrest, a law enforcement source said.
This year, Downtown cops have been cracking down on teens who congregate after school, forcing them to disperse, said a barber at nearby Lawrence Barber Shop who stepped out for a cigarette and saw the whole incident.
“Cops are pushing them,” said Cesar Sanchez.
About 100 teens mobbed Jay Street following the bloody arrest, according to witnesses, and at least two people were hauled off by police in the back of a squad car.
“It was a mini-riot,” said Myra Eanes, an NYPD employee who said she saw the tail end of the chaos on Jay Street.
Eanes said that loitering kids often fight and cause problems Downtown and blamed nearby George Westinghouse High School.
“They should close that place down,” she said.
Police said they had no details about what happened on Jay Street.
— with Matthew Perlman
