OPINION

Schoolhouse to Courthouse

By DONNA LIEBERMAN

Published: December 8, 2012

KENNETH screwed up. The 11th grader made a crude joke about the police officers in his Bronx high school — and an officer overheard.

Sam Kalda

“What did you say?” the officer demanded. “Say it again and I’m going to punch you in the [expletive] mouth.”

“You can’t [expletive] touch me,” said Kenneth, who has Asperger syndrome.

And so it began …

The officer pulled out his nightstick, with one hand, grabbed Kenneth (whose name I’ve changed) by the throat with the other, and pushed him against the wall. Then he pinned the boy’s arms behind his back and pulled him, by the neck of his hoodie, down the fourth-floor hallway.

The officer, who said Kenneth pushed him, arrested Kenneth and drove him to the local precinct, where officers took his photo and his fingerprints, and detained him overnight in a locked cell.

Kenneth says he was not permitted to call his mother — or a lawyer — until much later in the day and it wasn’t until the next morning, when he was taken to court and charged with resisting arrest, that he was read his rights. On the advice of court-appointed counsel, Kenneth pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and emerged from the incident with an arrest record.

The story is disturbing, but not unusual.

Kenneth’s was one of 882 arrests in New York City public schools during the 2011-12 school year. (The police issued another 1,666 summonses for illegal conduct.) The incidents involved ranged from resisting arrest to possessing marijuana to drawing graffiti. Serious felony arrests were rare.

Public outcry over the arrest of 5-year-old Dennis Rivera in 2008 helped lead to a policy change: the New York City Police Department now primarily uses Velcro handcuffs on elementary school children. But the new, soft cuffs don’t address what my organization, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and others say is a high incidence of excessive police force, unlawful arrest and routine civil rights violations in New York City public schools.

via Take Police Officers Off the School Discipline Beat – NYTimes.com.