Portside

A woman is suing New York City after she claims she was forced to spend eight days in a mental health facility and given a $13,000 (£8,500) bill because a police officer didn't believe the BMW she was driving was hers.

Kamilah Brock, 32, who is a banker, said that police had initially pulled her over at a red light in Harlem and asked her why her hands were not on the steering wheel. She said "I was dancing, I am at a light," and was then asked to get out of the car.

Brock was then taken into custody and transported to the NYPD's 30th precinct where she says she was held for several hours before being released without charges.

She was told to return to pick up her 2003 BMW 325Cl the next day.

She goes on to say that when she returned to claim the car, police said they didn't believe she was the rightful owner of the vehicle.

"I just felt like from the moment I said I owned a BMW, I was looked at as a liar," Brock told PIX 11. "They put me in handcuffs and said they just need to put me in handcuffs to take me to my car. And I said OK, whatever it's gonna take to get to my car."

"Then EMS approached me. And they said we're gonna take you to your car. And I'm like, in an ambulance? I'm going to my car in an ambulance? I'm going to my car in an ambulance? I was just so confused."

She was taken to Harlem hospital psychiatric ward, where she claims medical records obtained by her attorney, Michael Lamonsoff, show she was forced to take lithium and injected with powerful sedatives.

"He held onto me and then the doctor stuck me in the arm and I was on a stretcher and I woke up to them taking my clothes off, specifically my underwear," she said in the interview," according to the Daily Mail.

While in the hospital, Kamilah Brock, 32, reported being stripped naked and injected with sedatives, the Daily Mail reports.

Her lawyer claims that over the eight days in the hospital, personnel repeatedly tried to get Brock to deny that she owned the BMW, that she was a banker, and that President Barack Obama followed her on Twitter. All of which are true.

"I was looked at as a liar," she said.

According to Lamonsoff, Brock has no history of mental health problems.

"If a white woman was trying to reclaim her BMW impounded by police, would she have been made a victim?" he told the Huffington Post.

"Would she have been questioned? Would she have been subject to sarcastic comments? Would she be made to justify who she was in order to ask for help? I don't think so. I do think race played a part in this."