NYC Woman Gets $29,000 Compensation For Topless Arrest - Civil Rights Violated

via cnn.com

NEW YORK (AP) -- A woman arrested for exposing her breasts has

accepted a $29,000 settlement from the city, her lawyer said.

Jill Coccaro, 27, was arrested on a topless stroll two years ago,

despite a 1992 state appeals court ruling that concluded women should

have the same right as men to take off their shirts.

Coccaro, who now goes by the name Phoenix Feeley, remained in custody

for 12 hours before she was told prosecutors were not going to pursue

charges.

Her attorney, Jeffrey Rothman, told the Daily News that his client won

the civil rights settlement from the city, which did not admit or deny

wrongdoing.

"We hope the police learn a lesson and respect the rights of women to

go topless," Rothman said.

Feeley told the New York Post that she was not treated well after her

August 4, 2005, arrest in Manhattan's Lower East Side section. She

claimed in an October lawsuit that a police officer yanked her out of

a patrol car by her hair and police took her to a hospital for a

psychiatric evaluation.

She told the newspaper she had gone bare-breasted after running the

2004 city marathon without police bothering her.

"I've always just felt that was something natural," Feeley said of

going topless. "I've kind of always done it out of practicality."

OK ... while all NYC women -can- go topless, does that

mean all NYC women -should- go topless ? I mean, well,

some women should just, you know, bow to aesthetic

principles and keep it on - kind of like how old pot-

bellied man-goats should never, EVER, wear tiny

bathing suits at the beach :-)

What concerns me about this case isn't so much that the

cops screwed up and arrested her, or even held her for so

long until the legal issue was clarified. It's that they

dragged her to a psychiatrist, as if making use of her

civil rights and not acting like a puritan made her insane.

This stinks of the old Soviet approach to dissidents.