[Marxism] Children handcuffed in school; what is going on? Sunday, January 27, 2008 New York City Public School Parents

[Bonnie Weinstein <giobon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Children handcuffed in school; what is going on?

Sunday, January 27, 2008

New York City Public School Parents

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/
<http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/>

 

Two recent incidents provide yet more evidence that the situation with cops
in the schools has gotten completely out of control.

 

Twelve days ago a ten year old girl was handcuffed on a school bus, and on
Friday, a five year old boy was handcuffed at his elementary school and
taken to a psychiatric hospital -- even after his babysitter came to pick
him up. Both these children had serious disabilities which required more
sensitive interventions.

 

According to the Daily News, the Kindergarten student, who suffers from
attention deficit disorder, speech problems and asthma, has had nightmares
ever since and will start seeing a psychologist soon.

 

The NYCLU [National Civil Liberties Union] and other advocacy groups have
documented in detail repeated abuses of the police and safety agents in our
schools-- whose number has grown until they now constitute the tenth largest
police force in the country. Several times, even principals have been
arrested for coming to the aid of students after they had been manhandled by
safety agents.

 

In 2005, the DOE [Department of Education] suspended more students than the
entire student population of New Haven.

 

New legislation has been proposed, called the Student Safety Act, which
would provide more transparency and oversight as regards disciplinary and
security policies in our public schools. For more on this important issue,
see the NYCLU website here: [see below]

 

http://www.nyclu.org/node/1601

 

Posted by Leonie Haimson at 1/27/2008 06:54:00 PM

 

Labels: children arrested, handcuffs, NYCLU, police in the schools,
suspensions

 

 

 

 

*---------*---------*---------*---------*

CUFFED SCHOOLKID FEARED FOR HER LIFE

By KEVIN FASICK

New York Post

January 27, 2008

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01272008/news/regionalnews/cuffed_schoolkid_fear
ed_for_her_life_250288.htm
<http://www.nypost.com/seven/01272008/news/regionalnews/cuffed_schoolkid_fea
red_for_her_life_250288.htm>

 

January 27, 2008 -- A disabled 10-year-old Brooklyn girl handcuffed by
security outside her elementary school said yesterday she was afraid of the
officers and thought they'd never let her go.

 

"I thought if they arrested me, I would never get out. I thought half of my
life would be gone," said little Imecca Burton, as she fought off tears at a
news conference outside Police Headquarters.

 

"I never thought I'd see my brothers and sisters again," said the girl, who
attends PS 25 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

 

Imecca, who suffers from attention deficit disorder and dyslexia, and needs
occupational therapy, was handcuffed at 3:15 p.m. on Jan. 15 on a school bus
by two NYPD officers who saw some unruly kids on board.

 

Two days later, another child, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera, was cuffed by a
security officer at his elementary school.

 

"I'm afraid of the police now. I don't ever want this to happen to another
child," Imecca said. "It doesn't make me feel good at all."

 

Her mother, Taneisha Pearson, 34, said she was "devastated that this
happened to my daughter.

 

"She's only 10 and now she's afraid of the police," Pearson said. "She's
afraid to go outside. She's crying all the time now."

 

Civil-rights lawyer Norman Siegel plans to sue. In front of reporters,
Siegel told Imecca: "You did nothing wrong. What they did was wrong."

 

Sen. Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) said Velcro-lock handcuffs might be a good way
for cops to restrain children.

 

*---------*---------*---------*---------*

 

5-year-old boy handcuffed in school, taken to hospital for misbehaving

BY CARRIE MELAGO

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Friday, January 25th 2008, 4:00 AM

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/01/25/2008-01-25_5yearold_boy_handcuffe
d_in_school_taken_.html?print=1&page=all
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/01/25/2008-01-25_5yearold_boy_handcuff
ed_in_school_taken_.html?print=1&amp;page=all>

 

Kindergartner Dennis Rivera, 5, tells how he was handcuffed to chair at
Queens school last week as mom, Jasmina Vasquez, listens. Koester for News

 

Kindergartner Dennis Rivera, 5, tells how he was handcuffed to chair at
Queens school last week as mom, Jasmina Vasquez, listens.

 

A 5-year-old boy was handcuffed and hauled off to a psych ward for
misbehaving in kindergarten - but the tot's parents say NYPD school safety
agents are the ones who need their heads examined.

 

"He's 5 years old. He was scared to death," Dennis Rivera's mother, Jasmina
Vasquez, told the Daily News. "You cannot imagine what it's done to him."

 

Dennis - who suffers from speech problems, asthma and attention deficit
disorder - never went back to class at Public School 81 in Queens after the
traumatic incident.

 

His mom and a school source said Dennis threw a tantrum inside the Ridgewood
school at 11 a.m. on Jan. 17.

 

Dennis was taken to the principal's office, where he apparently knocked
items off a desk.

 

Rather than calling the boy's parents, a school safety agent cuffed the
boy's small hands behind his back using metal restraints, the school source
said.

 

The agent and school officials then called an ambulance to take the tot to
Elmhurst Hospital Center for a mental evaluation.

 

Vasquez was stunned when a guidance counselor called her at work to say her
son was being taken to the psych ward.

 

Vasquez rushed to the school from her job as a patient representative at
Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. On the way, she called Dennis' baby-sitter,
who was closer to PS 81, and asked her to hurry over to the school.

 

When baby-sitter Sandy Ortiz arrived, Dennis was still handcuffed, she said.
School safety agents also were holding his elbows even though the boy was
calm, Ortiz said. Dennis is about 4-feet-3 and weighs 68 pounds.

 

"I hugged him. I said, 'OK, release the cuffs, I'm taking him,'" she
recalled. "They told me, 'No, Miss. You're not taking him anywhere.'"

 

Ortiz routinely picks up Dennis from class. She said she's never seen him
behave in a way that would require him to be restrained.

 

"I was so upset. There's no reason to handcuff a baby of 5 years old,
traumatize him that way," she said.

 

The handcuffs were removed before Dennis was walked out of the school and
driven by ambulance to Elmhurst Hospital Center. He was evaluated at the
hospital and released about four hours later, his mom said.

 

School sources said Dennis had punched an assistant principal the day before
he acted out in class. The sources also said he broke glass in an office
door a week earlier.

 

A spokeswoman for the city Education Department declined to comment on why
school safety agents needed to handcuff Dennis, saying the incident was
under investigation.

 

The NYPD, which oversees school safety agents, also declined to discuss
specifics. Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said, "We hope common
sense would prevail and we are looking at what happened."

 

Vasquez immediately withdrew Dennis from PS 81 and enrolled him in a private
school, Grand Street Settlement.

 

"I asked him, 'Do you want to go back to that school?' He broke down in
tears," Vasquez said. "He said, 'I don't want to go! I don't want to go!'"

 

cmelago@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

With Michael White

 

*---------*---------*---------*---------*

 

Criminalizing the Classroom and NYC Students

March 18, 2007

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2007/03/criminalizing-classroom-a
nd-nyc.html

 

The New York Civil Liberties Union has released a scathing critique of
school policing practices, based on over 1,000 interviews and surveys,
describing how NYC students have become criminalized as a consequence of
overly aggressive policing operations, which in many instances, have led to
less safety in schools rather than more.

 

The documented behavior of the police and School Safety Agents includes
derogatory, abusive comments and conduct; intrusive searches; inappropriate
sexual attention; physical abuse; and arrests of students for minor
violations, or for nothing at all.

 

Countless armed NYPD officers along with thousands of SSAs patrol our
schools every day -- the total number of whom constitute the tenth largest
police force in the country -- more than Washington DC, Detroit, Baltimore
and many other large cities. San Antonio has only half as many police per
resident as NYC schools have per student.

 

Almost 100,000 students everyday are forced to endure scanners,
bag-searches, and pat downs, with no probable cause -- and by personnel who
are often abusive and arbitrarily confiscate their possessions, and never
return them.

 

NYC is alone among the largest districts in the country in the manner in
which police and agents are assigned to schools who are neither selected,
trained or under the authority of the educators in the building, and as a
result, our students are suffering.

 

Here is one story:

 

Statement of Biko Edwards, Samuel J. Tilden High School

 

Biko EdwardsIn January of this year I was late to Chemistry Lab because I
had been talking with my math teacher after math class. As I was rushing to
class, Val Lewis, the Assistant Principal for Security, stopped me in the
hallway. Because I was worried that I would be late to Chemistry Lab, which
has strict attendance requirements, I asked Officer Lewis let me keep going
to class, and I told him that I had been talking with my math teacher.
Officer Lewis didn't listen to my explanation and instead told me to go to
the "focus room," where we have detention.

 

I kept begging to go to Chemistry Lab, and Officer Lewis got angry and
threatened to send me to the principal's office. Then he ordered a police
officer stationed at the school, Officer Rivera, to arrest me. Officer
Rivera grabbed me and slammed me against a brick door divider, which cut my
face. I was bleeding. Officer Rivera then sprayed Mace in my eyes and face,
then called for back-up on his radio and handcuffed me.

 

Eventually they took me to the hospital, where I spent about two hours
handcuffed to a chair and received some treatment for my injuries. Then they
took me to the local precinct and to central booking. I missed the rest of
my classes that day. Overall I spent more than 28 hours in police custody. I
was also suspended for four days.

 

If it can happen like this in school, imagine what police officers could do
to you outside if something like this happened?. Why are they arresting
school kids while they're in school? Tensions between students, teachers,
principals, and school safety agents wouldn't be as bad if SSAs would do
more listening to students and less pushing them around.

 

Biko Edwards is from Crown Heights and is a seventeen-year-old
eleventh-grader at Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn.

 

An update: in a similar vein, see the new report from NESRI, the National
Economic and Social Rights Initiative, "Deprived of Dignity: The Degrading
Treatment and Abusive discipline in New York City And Los Angeles Public
Schools."

 

Posted by Leonie Haimson at 3/18/2007 07:38:00 PM

 

Labels: NYCLU, police, scanners, School Safety Agents

 

1 comments:

 

Anonymous said...

 

   I'm a school safety agent and I've

   seen alot of abuse by agents and cops. I want to apologize for whats

    happen to you. I want you to know that we're not all the same. I treat
all students and staff members with respect.Please tell your fellow students
that they must learn their rights,once students and parents know their
rights things will go better for every student.

   April 28, 2007 4:25 PM

 

*---------*---------*---------*---------*

 

Advocates Testify on Impact of School Suspensions, Demand Passage of the
Student Safety Act

Published by the New York Civil Liberties Union (http://www.nyclu.org
<http://www.nyclu.org/> )

January 23, 2008

http://www.nyclu.org/node/1601 <http://www.nyclu.org/node/1601>

 

January 23, 2008 -- The New York Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of
advocates today called on the City Council to pass the Student Safety Act,
legislation that would provide much-needed transparency and scrutiny to the
disciplinary and security policies in New York City public schools.

 

At a City Council hearing on school suspensions, NYCLU Executive Director
Donna Lieberman said over-policing of the schools combined with an
over-reliance on harsh disciplinary methods, such as expulsions and extended
suspension, disrupts education and pushes many students into the prison
system.

 

³Schools should be pushing our kids into college and good jobs, not
prisons,² Lieberman said. ³In many of our schools, though, discipline has
been pulled from the hands of educators and taken over by the NYPD. Behavior
problems have turned into criminal matters, and youth of color and children
with disabilities are paying the price. It is time to break the school to
prison pipeline. The Student Safety Act is an important first step toward
this goal.²

 

The Student Safety Act would require quarterly reporting by the Department
of Education and NYPD to the City Council on school safety issues, including
incidents involving the arrest, expulsion or suspension of students. It
would provide the public with raw data to study the impact of disciplinary
and security policies and practices, and encourage the crafting of more
effective policies.

 

The act also would extend the jurisdiction of the Civilian Complaint Review
Board to include complaints of misconduct levied against school safety
agents, NYPD personnel assigned to provide security in the schools. More
than 5,000 school safety agents are assigned to the city¹s schools, but
there is currently no meaningful mechanism for parents and students to
report safety agent abuse.

 

This act is supported by organizations such as Advocates for Children,
Correctional Association, Make the Road New York, National Economic and
Social Rights Initiative, New York Civil Liberties Union, Teachers Unite,
the Urban Youth Collaborative and Children¹s Defense Fund ­ New York.

 

In her testimony at the council hearing, Lieberman noted that students who
have been suspended are three times more likely to drop out of school than
students who have never been suspended.

 

³Dropping out in turn triples the likelihood that a person will be
incarcerated later in life,² Lieberman said, referencing a 2001 report by
the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. ³By suspending our students en masse, we
are pushing more and more young people out of schools and into the streets
and even incarceration. And the children impacted by these practices are
often the most vulnerable ­ special ed students and young people of color.²

 

School suspension rates have soared in the city and throughout the country
due to an increase in zero tolerance policies and other harsh disciplinary
methods.

 

New York City students are routinely subject to superintendent suspensions,
which can range from 10 days to an entire year. Superintendent suspensions
increased by 76 percent between 2000 and 2005, jumping from 8,567 to 15,090.

 

³The DOE¹s discipline policy shifts the focus of educators from teaching our
youth to policing our youth,² said Nelson Mar, at attorney with Legal
Services for New York City, LSNY ­ Bronx. ³In 2005, New York City suspended
more students than the entire student population of New Haven or Camden.²

 

Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, expressed the need
for less punitive behavioral interventions.

 

³We see students suspended repeatedly without receiving the support they
need to turn around their problem behaviors in the classroom,² Sweet said.

 

The Student Safety Act¹s reporting requirements will help policy makers and
the public to fully understand and address the impact of the city¹s
over-reliance on suspensions and expulsions.

 

³This information will be essential as we attempt to address the educational
outcomes of students who are currently lost in the system, either between
schools or out of schools,² said Udi Ofer, the NYCLU¹s advocacy director.
³Improved access to data and increased scrutiny of our school disciplinary
system will only expand the educational opportunities of all of our
students.²

 

Click here to read the NYCLU's testimony.

 



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