A topless rights activist claims her circus career has suffered after she was body-checked by a cop during a parking dispute, the Daily News has learned.
Phoenix Feeley, 36, alleges in a lawsuit that she suffered cop-inflicted injuries on July 24, 2014.
Feeley and “a number of other people on East 12th Street, between Avenues A and B, were waiting for street cleaning to end, so they could park their cars on the other side of the street,” according to her Manhattan Federal Court suit.
As Feeley, aka Jill Coccaro, waited around noon that day, a man on the block assaulted her with hot coffee, she said.
Feeley — who notoriously called 16-days in a New Jersey jail for topless sunbathing a “death sentence” — alerted cops.
One officer, who was “full of hostility” threatened to give Feeley and those speaking up for her parking tickets.
The officer started writing Feeley a ticket as she stood near her car and then asked her to move.
When the flame-eating Feeley asked why she needed to move, the officer “violently and intentionally barreled into Plaintiff, causing her pain and injury,” her lawsuit claims.
TODD MAISEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWSA parking dispute set off Feeley's encounter with cops, according to her lawsuit.
“She is a circus performer so it has been affecting her work. She does trapeze and other circus activities,” medical records cited in an amended complaint state.
While Feeley is receiving acupuncture treatment, the alleged injuries she suffered “continue to cause her pain and limit her professional and personal activities to this day.”
“The officer involved ... acted like a bully and a thug, and he used unnecessary force on a woman much smaller than him,” said Jeffrey Rothman, Feeley’s lawyer. “He, like so many other of his male colleagues in the police force, needs to learn how to keep their hands to themselves and to control their anger.”
Feeley, who advocates that women should have the right to go topless in public, has alleged police misconduct in other lawsuits against New York City.
She won a $29,000 settlement from the city in 2007, following her allegations she was falsely arrested for walking topless on Delancey St. in 2005. Women can legally go topless in public in New York State.
Feeley also claimed in 2012 court papers that cops wrongly arrested her for putting a “Got Vermont?” sticker on her co-op's front gate. She received a $35,000 settlement from the city.
Asked about the new suit, a spokesman for the city Law Department said: “We will review the complaint.”
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