Cancer cop's battle
‘Bully’ NYPD doc forced me out: suit
An NYPD officer who survived a stroke and two bouts of breast cancer alleges in a lawsuit that a department doctor bullied and harassed her into quitting.
Destiny McCann, 39, who became an officer in 2009, got her first breast cancer diagnosis in 2018, suffered a stroke in 2019 and had a second breast cancer diagnosis in 2021, her Brooklyn Supreme Court lawsuit filed on Tuesday claims.
The Jamaica, Queens, mother says her work problems started when a new NYPD deputy chief surgeon, John Santucci, started overseeing her disability case in 2020, the filing claims.
“He really bullied me off,” McCann told The Post. “I worked all of these years, and for him to push me off . . . I get basically pennies.”
According to the suit, when McCann, who had “trouble walking” and “became disabled,” saw Santucci, he’d scream at her: “I don’t care what other doctors said. I am in charge here and you are going back to work. Resign if you don’t want to be tortured.”
‘Threatened’
Santucci, 62, who is also affiliated with NYU Langone Health, allegedly subjected McCann to monthly harassment, threatened to suspend her if she took any more sick days and tried to force her back to work before she was recovered from radiation treatment, the suit claims.
“I feel like it was unfair,” McCann said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I just got sick.”
McCann claims she was forced to continue to see Santucci over two years until she quit in January 2022, despite asking more than once that a different doctor be assigned to her case.
She says that over that time period, Santucci allegedly told McCann: “You never had a stroke” and “Nothing is wrong with you.”
McCann says she filed a complaint with the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity on March 5, 2021, and the case “was closed without investigation.”
The next month, McCann began radiation therapy, ending in June 2021, when Santucci tried to “force” her back to work although she was still recovering from the radiation and had third-degree burns he “ignored,” the suit alleges.
That July, one sergeant “saw [her] radiation burns and stated how wrong it was for [her] to be at work,” the filing alleges.
Also in July 2021, Santucci designated McCann as “Chronic B” sick, meaning she’d have to notify the NYPD every time she wanted to leave her house, the suit claims.
“I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t take the stress, the yelling,” McCann said.
McCann’s lawyer, John Scola, told The Post: “The NYPD would rather harass an employee who has cancer than . . . medically accommodate them.”
Her suit seeks unspecified damages from the city and Santucci. The city Law Department said: “We’ll review the case.”
Santucci and the NYPD didn’t return requests for comment.