Yvonne Smallwood
December 3, 1987· Unknown, New York City, New York
- People
- Yvonne Smallwood
- Outcome
- unknown
On December 3, 1987, Yvonne Smallwood, a 28-year-old Black woman from the Bronx, was involved in an altercation with members of the New York City Police Department on the streets of Bronx County. The incident began as a dispute over a summons issued to her boyfriend. While police claimed Smallwood attacked them, her boyfriend and another witness disputed this account. She was arrested on assault charges. After her arrest, Smallwood spent the last six days of her life shuttling between Rikers Island, the courts, and city hospitals. On December 9, 1987, she died at City Hospital Center in Elmhurst, Queens. The circumstances of her death prompted a grand jury investigation that generated approximately 2,000 pages of minutes. On May 16, 1988, the Bronx District Attorney filed a motion seeking to release the grand jury minutes with names redacted. Smallwood's death became one of several high-profile cases of alleged police brutality against Black New Yorkers during the 1980s, contributing to heightened racial tensions in New York City. Filmmaker Spike Lee included her among the Black New Yorkers memorialized in the dedication of his 1989 film *Do the Right Thing*. Lee dedicated the film to the families of Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller Jr., Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood, and Michael Stewart—five of whom were killed by police officers. In his 1987 notes about the film, Lee wrote about "a young woman, charged with nothing but a parking violation, dies in police custody," an apparent reference to Smallwood's case. Smallwood's name continues to be remembered as part of the history of police brutality against Black Americans. In 2020, a Baltimore Police lieutenant read her name aloud during demonstrations following George Floyd's death, and her name was included in the Black Lives Matter Memorial Fence Artifact Collection in Washington, D.C.