US man to sue NYPD for $1m over being arrested for stealing own car

NEW YORK - A man in the US is set to sue the NYPD for 1 million dollars after he was arrested in front of his kids for stealing his own car.

Bronx man, Jamieson Prince, 43, said his SUV had been taken by the NYPD after his 23-year-old son borrowed it in July and crashed it in Harlem before fleeing the scene.

Prince said cops seized the vehicle as part of the investigation after his son hit a pedestrian, but when he went to the 28th Precinct stationhouse to retrieve his SUV, police couldn’t find it.

“They had absolutely no idea what happened to it. It had disappeared,” the New York Daily News quoted Prince, an MTA track worker,” as saying.

Prince said he found the 2007 GMC Yukon four months later, parked three blocks from the stationhouse, and thinking that everything was okay he drove off in it.

But cops arrived a week later and cuffed him as he prepared to drive his daughters to school on November 11, and accused him of removing police property without permission.

“I told them it was a mix-up and proved to them I owned the car, but they wouldn’t listen. My little girls saw me arrested over nothing. It was so painful and humiliating,” he stated.

“How can the NYPD just confiscate property, lose it, then arrest you for possessing it? It’s totally wrong. I want an apology,” he said.

Prince’s lawyer Neil Wollerstein said a rogue police employee might have improperly used the SUV, leading to its disappearance.

The charges against Prince were dropped on January 12.

“I just want my daughters to know their father didn’t break the law. This turned my world upside down,” he added. (ANI)