A former New York City police detective alleges he dealt with discrimination as a member of the department’s dive team. NY1′s Michael Herzenberg filed the following report.
The New York City Police Department’s Scuba Unit performed rescue and recovery operations during the “Miracle on the Hudson” plane landing on the river in January of 2009. Then, in August, divers responded to a plane crashing into a helicopter. Nine people died. Again, more than two years later, they strapped on their tanks after a fatal helicopter crash at takeoff in the East River.
Oscar Smith said he was a a detective and the only African-American member of the scuba unit for seven years, but after each of those emergencies, he claims his supervisors sidelined him.
“If I’m not going to help the public to the best of my ability, what am I doing here?” he said.
He believes racism and bigotry over perceptions of his sexuality kept him out of the water and under a barrage of ignorant insults.
“It pretty much just made me feel as if I didn’t matter,” he said.
On Thursday, he and his attorneys filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and the NYPD.
“The focus should be on, where were the officials?” said Norman Siegel, Smith’s attorney. “How do you let a scuba unit in a harbor division go on for all these years without a racially mixed staff?”
“I went through all the other options, not wanting to go and sue, and they didn’t even bother to hear anything I had to say,” Smith said.
Smith said he retired last year after 16 years on the force, doing so without a pension and health benefits because he said his safety was in jeopardy and he believed his team might not have had his back.
“There was times they would joke around, said on a dive op, ‘You might not come back, you know, things like that can happen,’ or on a night tour, ‘You might not wake up,’” Smith said.
Smith is seeking more than $ 1 million in damages.
NY1 reached out to the city for comment, and the city’s Law Department said it will review the case.
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