NY: ELDERLY PROTESTER PEPPER SPRAYED BY ICE
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NEW YORK (WCBS) — A New York City protester claims she was pepper-sprayed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, and she’s now planning to file a lawsuit.
Linda Wolff, 72, says the incident unfolded Thursday when masked ICE agents were trying to get their disabled vehicle towed in Inwood. She says she joined demonstrators, screaming at the agents to leave the neighborhood.
“I said to the tow truck driver, ‘You know, you should be ashamed of yourself, working for ICE,’ and he got crazy,” Wolff said. “The ICE guys came over, and they just Maced me.”
Video shows Wolff on the sidewalk, filming the agents with her phone, as an agent approaches her and sprays pepper spray toward her head.
In the video Wolff filmed herself, an agent tells her to back up, then sprays her with the pepper spray at close range.
Wolff can later be heard saying, “Well, you just Maced me.”
“I’m gonna do it again,” the agent responds.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CBS News New York in a statement, in part: “At the time in question, a group of individuals swarmed, became combative and verbally assaultive, and refused to move out of the way, in an effort to obstruct law enforcement, a federal crime. Law enforcement provided ample notice to these individuals to clear the street and used appropriate measures.”
Days later, Wolff says she’s still recovering from the effects of the pepper spray.
“My eyes, they’re burning, and so they’re very sensitive to the light,” she said.
Wolff tells us she is now pursuing legal action.
“It’s in the Constitution,” she said. “I can stand on the sidewalk and protest.”
“You do have a legal, constitutional right to film federal officers, especially in public spaces like that,” public interest attorney Kaivan Shroff said. “You don’t have the right to interfere or obstruct a law enforcement action. It’s very clear she wasn’t doing that from the video.”
Despite the fallout from the incident, she says she has no plans on slowing down her work of protesting and exercising her First Amendment right.
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