Steve Thurston (2021)
Gabrielle Elliot tears up after talking about her arrest with her children present.
A woman arrested in Saratoga Springs Sept. 7 and charged with three misdemeanors—resisting arrest and endangering the welfare of a child as well as an attempted assault from a July 14 protest—accepted a decision of Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal. This proposed disposition drafted by the Saratoga County District Attorney's office was also approved by Judge Jeffrey Wait in Saratoga Springs City Court Thursday Nov. 18. So long she is not arrested in the next six months, her record will be sealed. The judge explained that if she is arrested again, “These charges could be placed back on the calendar.”
That evening she had arrived at the Saratoga Springs Police Department after the arrest of Lexis Figuereo, the father of her two children. Figureo had been unexpectedly arrested for his actions during a July 14, 2021 Black Lives Matter protest in which traffic on Broadway in Saratoga Springs was stopped. A number of his supporters arrived to learn what happened and protest the arrests. Elliot was among them. Two others were also arrested that evening for their involvement in the July 14 protest. About one dozen have been arrested in the weeks since.
Police alleged Elliot threw a water bottle at one officer and that when they attempted to arrest her, she held onto her child’s stroller, which endangered the child’s welfare.
Her attorney Jasper Mills thanked both the judge and the district attorney’s office for agreeing to a fair outcome. He placed the blame squarely on the SSPD.
“This was the right result,” he said after the court hearing on the steps of City Hall.
“Saratoga’s DA’s office is honestly seeing this for what it is," he said, calling it, "a pile of garbage.”
Elliot said the police were to blame. She teared up when asked a question about what she was feeling with her children at the scene.
“You just want to be there for them,” she said. She said she was not sure what would happen to her children if the police took her in that moment.
Without Figuereo’s mother, Nedra Hickenbottom, to take them, she did not know what would happen in the chaotic scene.
“They [her two children] literally would have been left by the side of the road,” in the chaos she said. “[The police] endangered the welfare of my child.”
Figuereo has promised that a civil suit against the police and city is coming.
“The [New York State] Attorney General needs to look into this,” also, he said. The office of the Attorney General has said they have opened an investigation of the police department at least in part to consider the constitutionality of these and other arrests.
[Read more about the city’s response here and the new Commissioner of Public Safety’s response here.]
Calls to the District Attorney's office and to SSPD were not returned.
Editor's note: Corrections were made to the legal process that was followed in court today. Our original explanation was incorrect. It has been corrected, and we apologize for the mistake.