On Christmas Eve 2024, Andrea Smith-Taylor went shopping for presents for her five children.
The single mom was staying with her kids at a domestic violence shelter at the time, and felt a sense of accomplishment as she bought her kids clothing, boots, jewelry and a PlayStation — enough to fill two heaping shopping bags.
But before she could give her children their gifts, police arrested her and took everything.
The case against Smith-Taylor was later dismissed and sealed, and she did not want to say what it was about. But even after the charge was dropped, police never returned the gifts, or $3,500 in cash she had with her that day, according to court records.
“I apologized so much to my children,” she said. “I felt so weak, so broken, because there was nothing that I could do about it.”
Smith-Taylor is one of six people suing New York City, the NYPD property clerk and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. In the suit, they describe a "labyrinthine, time-intensive and burdensome” process that makes it nearly impossible for hundreds of thousands of people who are arrested or witness a crime each year to reclaim belongings seized during their interaction with law enforcement. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed by Brooklyn Defender Services and White & Case LLP, accuses the police department of violating people’s due process rights and upholding a convoluted system that courts have said for decades is unconstitutional.
