NEW YORK - In the aftermath of the city’s watchdog agency issuing a scathing report, finding excessive use of force by the NYPD in the worst of clashes between police and Black Lives Matter protesters, a young woman from Queens who was badly injured in a protest by the Barclays Center is speaking to NY1.

Dounya Zayer used to be able to do handstands and other gymnastic feats with ease.

But after she was shoved to the ground by an officer on May 31 at a Black Lives Matter protest, in a terrifying scene by the Barclays Center that quickly went viral, doctors told her she had suffered four herniated discs, two pinched nerves, and a sprained ligament in her back.

A return to handstands is now a longshot for this 21-year-old from Sunnyside, Queens.

“I was such an athletic person,” says Zayer, “and now I can’t even sit down for an hour without feeling pain in my back. I can’t even lift the children that I babysit because I feel pain in my back!”

NY1 was able to speak with Zayer, just one day after the city’s watchdog agency, the Department of Investigation, had issued a scathing report that found the NYPD had not only abused its authority but used excessive force in the worst of the clashes between police and protesters back in May and June, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.

“It boils my blood because all this report did was state exactly what hundreds and hundreds of protesters have been saying for the past six months,” says Zayer. “Not just saying. They had proof!”

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea has said he will implement recommendations made in the report, which range from drafting a patrol guide policy specific to protests, to strengthening external oversight by combining existing functions. Zayer believes the recommendations do not go far enough.

“People seem to think that this report coming out is like a shred of hope. It’s not. It’s just not,” she says.

What Zayer wants is for officers who use excessive force or abuse their authority to be held to a greater level of accountability, and she’s been working with a lawyer, suing the city, to achieve that.

In the meantime, she fears retaliation for speaking out.

“This is my biggest fear,” she says. “It’s not going to a protest but being taken by the police at a protest and being taken somewhere where there are no cameras.”

In response to the report, Mayor de Blasio says he takes responsibility for mistakes that were made and decisions that turned out to be wrong.

However, he does not believe the NYPD’s top brass should lose their jobs.