A 19-year veteran of the School Safety Division, who has been under a doctor’s care ever since a known Latin Kings gang member who was also a student choked her and slammed her against a wall, has not received any pay since the date of the incident, and is “all borrowed out.” She is trying to obtain food stamps to help her and her two children.

Even though, under the city’s contract with Local 237, the veteran peace officer qualifies to be paid her salary, she has not received any money from the city.

Problems started for School Safety Agent Evangeline Dancy at about 1 p.m. March 2, 2001, when she was ordered from her usual sixth floor station at Graphic Arts High School at 50th St. and 9th Ave., Manhattan, to make a sweep of the third floor.

A male student had been reported smoking marijuana in the bathroom and she went to check it out. When a youth exited the lavatory, he “reeked of marijuana and his eyes were all red,” Dancy said.

When she began to write up a report, she said, the student asserted that “it was no big thing,” that he had been stopped many times before. As she was writing, Dancy was suddenly grabbed from behind in a choke hold by another student, who was a member of the Latin Kings gang.

Gasping for breath and nearly passing out, the officer reached behind her and grabbed her attacker by his genitals in an effort to break free. The pain she inflicted caused her assailant to break off the choke hold and throw her against a wall.

Once freed, Dancy radioed for help and other SSAs rushed to aid her. The injured officer identified the 19-year-old student, who was writhing in pain on the floor, as her attacker.

Two of her co-workers assisted Dancy to a security room on the second floor and she was taken by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital, where she was given oxygen, treated for a sprained neck and a bump on her head “like somebody hit me on the head with a baseball bat.”

While she was at the hospital, a lieutenant and a sergeant came, not to discuss her assault but to get her to sign a notification that she was facing disciplinary charges for previous latenesses at work.

Dancy, through her oxygen mask, refused to sign and became so visibly upset that the doctor told them to get out and leave her alone.

Dancy was released from Bellevue under a doctor’s care, but pain in her neck caused her to seek help from a neurologist two days later. “I was very dizzy and couldn’t move my neck at all,” she recalled. “My neck was swollen and I had slurred speech, which the neurologist said was probably from the throat injury.” She was in bed a week.

The assaulted officer said that since the attack, her voice has become deeper and her speech has been affected. She said she has also been diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress syndrome.

For the past two years, Dancy has been taking pain killers, ordered by the neurologist, in order to sleep.

Since the incident, Dancy has not been paid even though officers injured in an assault are entitled to full compensation for up to 18 months. Workers’ Compensation gave her checks for $228 four or five times, but she hasn’t received any compensation for two years, even though her 19-year-old attacker has been convicted of the assault.

Her assailant, however, was not arrested by anyone at the school, but by local police officers who made the arrest after Dancy swore out a complaint against him. The attacker was tried and convicted of assault, but Dancy is still being denied her pay.

When Dancy alerted the union, Local attorneys filed a grievance to demand the pay to which Dancy is entitled. This was denied, and the union is now awaiting arbitration to remedy the situation.

“We are doing everything we possibly can for Officer Dancy,” said Deborah Singer, the Local’s attorney. “Now we are just waiting for a date.”