HARLEM, NY — A Harlem political leader has filed suit against the city on Friday, alleging he was falsely arrested and kept in custody for 24 hours after hitting a cyclist with his car door last year — saying the ordeal left him depressed and humiliated.
Keith L.T. Wright, a longtime Assemblyman from Central Harlem and current chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party, was arrested last September and accused of hitting the cyclist on Fifth Avenue near West 139th Street — then leaving the scene.
But charges against Wright were dropped weeks later — and Wright now says he was the real victim in the "dooring" saga.
"At the time of my arrest, I was 66 years old, had lived in Harlem all my life, and had never ever been arrested or incarcerated before," Wright said in a sworn affidavit. "I served in the State Legislature in excess of 20 years, where I represented many of the people at the location of the accident. Accordingly the last thing I would do was commit a crime."
Wright says he parked his BMW just before 9 p.m. on Aug. 26 outside a store on Fifth Avenue. As his next-door neighbor sat inside the car, Wright opened the driver's side door — and within a "fraction of a second," the e-bike rider crashed into it, sending him flying.
After the crash, Wright says he and his passenger "immediately offered to assist" the cyclist, looking around for...
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