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Ruff break.
An Upper West Side woman was handcuffed, tossed into a police holding cell and treated like a criminal all over a minor infraction — walking her two dogs without a leash in Riverside Park, she told The Post.
Dora Marchand, 29, took her two mini Australian shepherds, Comet and Sophie, out for a walk on Aug. 4 and only took doggy bags and her keys with her — leaving behind the leashes, her phone and identification.
Marchand, a recent transplant from San Francisco who only moved to the city a week earlier, was just about to leave the green space when a Parks Enforcement officer called her over and reprimanded her for not having the dogs on a leash, which is required in the park.
“He was just like, ‘OK, you don’t have a leash. Just don’t do it again.’ He gave a warning,” Marchand, a tech recruiter, recalled Wednesday.
“And then this other guy came across a field, I guess that’s like his partner, and he was like, ‘No, no, no, we’re gonna have to write you up.’”
The officer asked for her information but Marchand couldn’t remember the address of the sublet she’d just moved into and he said he had no choice but to put her in handcuffs and bring her to a nearby police precinct to make sure she didn’t have any “warrants.”
Video of the incident, first reported by the West Side Rag, shows two officers and a Parks Department supervisor standing around Marchand, who has her hands cuffed around her back.
Though unleashed, Comet and Sophie also stood obediently nearby, circling around their owner as one of the officers tried in vain to herd them into wire cages. Off camera, the officer who initiated the arrest gleefully explained how he’d use an electric stick to shock them into compliance.
“He was excited about the rangers having the electric sticks or something to shock. He was like, ‘Oh, yeah, they’re gonna get them. It’s gonna work,’ ” Marchand recalled.
“I was like, ‘Really, you’re excited about this?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna work. They’re not gonna like it, but [they’re] gonna go inside and we’re gonna finish it.’ … I was like, ‘That’s weird that you’re excited about that.’ ”
Marchand offered to walk the officer over to her apartment, which was just around the corner, so she could prove where she lived and show him her identification, but she said he refused.
With help from a passerby, she managed to call her boyfriend, who came to the park with leashes and Marchand’s ID — but still it wasn’t enough, and she was forced to go to the precinct.
Marchand’s boyfriend returned home with both dogs in tow.
Once at the precinct, Marchand said she was treated like a “real” criminal — officers stripped her of her shoes and made her remove the strings from her pants as she sat in a holding cell, listening to NYPD cops rib the parks officer for even bringing her in.
“They were kind of all laughing like, ‘This is not fascist Germany, we don’t arrest people for like not having dogs on the leash,’ ” she said.
Marchand was issued two tickets and may be forced to pay up to $525 in fines for a situation that she said was completely blown out of proportion.
“They’re not trying to maul anybody. They’re not trying to attack anybody, and they don’t go up to people, even if they’re just like, ‘Hey, come here, puppy!’ They don’t even do that because it’s like they know they have a job, which is keep an eye on Mom, herd her, make sure she’s safe,” Marchand said of her pups.
“I feel like there’s other things to worry about.”
In response, a spokesperson for the Parks Department said “education is always our first course of action” but Marchand “refused to comply with the rules as stated by both [Parks Enforcement Patrol officers] and signage on site.”
“The patron also became confrontational and did not cooperate when asked for identification information,” the spokesperson said, a claim that Marchand emphatically denied.
“Parks Enforcement Officers attempted to issue a summons to a female patron in Riverside Park for two unleashed dogs on the soccer field. When she could not produce identification, she was taken to the local precinct where her identification was verified.”
The agency noted “handcuffs are standard” when transporting anyone to the precinct to ensure the “safety and protection of our officers.”
Additional reporting by Mark Lungariello
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