Virginia Rosa says police had the wrong apartment when they broke through the door to do a wellness check on her and her 9- and 11-year-old daughters inside the Baruch Houses. You can hear her and the officers on a video she posted on Facebook Live, part of which can be seen above:
Rosa: You have no right trying to get through my door like this.
Response: We're trying to check on you and your daughters.
"People have rights and you cannot come into someone's home like that," Rosa said.
Police say they went to the second floor apartment after receiving a 911 call from a neighbor who claimed they heard yelling and screams from the children inside. The NYPD says the responding officers did go to the right apartment, but Rosa is now planning to sue the city over of how the officers handled the call. She says she was thrown to the floor in front of her children and then taken to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital. She was not arrested.
"I met with the doctor, he felt I was stable, he let me go a half-hour later, where I then retrieved my children who were then in the ER room being looked — more wellness checking," Rosa said.
She said the incident happened at 6 p.m., but, hours after they at all returned home from the hospital, they received another knock from officers looking to do another wellness check.
Calling it harassment, Rosa filed a complaint with the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board. The National Action Network is helping her.
"If you see the person, when you come into the home you see that they are fine then why are you continuing on badgering the person if nothing is happening," said a member of the National Action Network. "We are going to help her and guide her file a civil lawsuit against the city."
In response, the NYPD said she refused officers entry, hence the police forcibly entering the apartment. They said she was acting irrational and taken to Bellevue as an emotionally disturbed person.
"We have to do what's necessary, I understand," Rosa says. "We have to save our children and protect our children — understood, but they…have to pay for what they've done."
Rosa said the incident was traumatic for her and her two daughters.