The spouse of a former NYPD high cop was handled like a felon after a minor site visitors cease as payback for her husband’s ugly, high-profile feud with division brass, a bombshell new lawsuit claims.
Deidre O’Connor-Donlon mentioned she was pulled over only one month after ex-interim police Commissioner Thomas Donlon nearly got here to blows with one other high-ranking cop on the New York Metropolis Marathon, the criticism filed Monday in State Supreme Courtroom in Manhattan claims.
The 52-page lawsuit is the most recent chapter within the simmering beef between the NYPD and the Donlon’s, together with a federal corruption declare filed by the previous commissioner over the summer time.
“It’s our rivalry that the arrest by no means would’ve occurred in the event that they weren’t retaliating in opposition to Commissioner Donlon,” O’Connor-Donlon’s lawyer, John Scola, mentioned Monday.
“It’s a nasty arrest. It by no means ought to’ve occurred,” he mentioned. “She’s nonetheless making an attempt to recover from the stress of the arrest. Mainly she was arrested for no purpose, they handcuffed her to the bench. She’s traumatized.”
In line with the lawsuit, O’Connor-Donlon was driving close to East 56th Road and First Avenue on Dec. 16, 2024, when she was concerned in a minor fender-bender that introduced cops to the scene.
She mentioned the encounter was “calm and routine” — till the officer on the scene acquired a cellphone name from a supervisor that modified every part, the lawsuit claims.
O’Connor-Donlon mentioned she was put in handcuffs, taken to the seventeenth Precinct stationhouse and saved in custody for greater than two hours — solely to finally be launched with a clear slate, the go well with mentioned.
Nonetheless, information of the arrest, together with the Donlon’s residence handle, made it into the evening’s information reviews.
The lawsuit suggests the information was leaked by the previous commissioner’s enemies contained in the NYPD.
The feud between Thomas Donlon and different division brass reached a boiling level throughout final 12 months’s marathon, when since-retired Chief of Employees Tarik Sheppard and Donlon acquired right into a scuffle.
The 2 acquired right into a shouting match when Sheppard photo-bombed a pic Donlon was posing for, with the argument getting so heated the 2 needed to be separated as punches had been about to fly.
Sheppard — a controversial determine who as soon as referred to as a reporter for The Put up a “f–king scumbag” over a easy press query — put in for retirement in April.
Nonetheless, this summer time, Donlon, a former FBI bigwig, turned issues up a notch by submitting a 251-page federal criticism, claiming the NYPD underneath Mayor Eric Adams “was legal at its core.”
“It’s core operate was to defend loyalists and silence inner critics by way of a calculated regime of favoritism, retaliation and concealment,” the federal criticism claimed.
In September, Donlon adopted up by sending a legal referral letter to the US Division of Justice looking for an investigation into Adams and high aides at Metropolis Corridor, claiming a probe was wanted to “dismantle a legal conspiracy contained in the NYPD.”
Now, O’Connor-Donlon has jumped into the fray.
Town’s legislation division didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon her lawsuit.
