An NYPD officer is suing Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city for treating cop-mothers seeking time to pump breast milk as if they were slackers taking too many breaks.
In a legal notice filed with the city comptroller, Simone Teagle says her bosses at the 113th Precinct in Queens gave her so many problems about her requests to pump at work that she developed mastitis, a painful condition that arises when nursing mothers fail to express milk regularly.
Teagle, 37, says the city failed to provide her and other breast-feeding moms with a private and clean space to pump on the job, in violation of the law.
She says she was harassed for “asserting her legal right” to pump and transferred in “retaliation.”
Teagle seeks $5 million in a lawsuit to be filed in Brooklyn federal court, said her lawyer Eric Sanders.
“The legislators decided it’s good public policy to protect the legal rights of nursing mothers in the workplace and we intend to hold the parties responsible for completely disregarding them,” Sanders said.
The city’s Law Department declined to comment.
In an interview with The Post, Teagle said the problems started shortly after she returned from maternity leave in January.
“They would look at me and roll their eyes. Or cut their eyes at me like, ‘Oh boy, here we go again.’ Sometimes they wouldn’t even acknowledge me,” she said.
The backlash was so bad she didn’t even dare to complain about the dumpy conditions she was forced to pump in — including the women’s bathroom, in her parked car and in a messy, moldy locker room, she said.
“There was trash on the floor, mold on the walls, old newspapers,” she told The Post.
“It was just a deplorable situation to pump milk in. Just horrible.”
She said her medical problems started in August, when a supervisor demanded she start logging her pump breaks where everyone could see them.
“After a while I stopped asking for a break,” she said. “Only when I felt the need and my breasts were filling up. I didn’t want to deal the faces and the nastiness.”
“I know there are other women who have dealt with the breast pump issue,” she said about the NYPD. “Most of them just totally stopped breastfeeding. They just stopped breastfeeding because they didn’t want to deal with it.”
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