The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against the New York City Police Department over the use of excessive force and wrongful arrests in city schools. As in many cities, New York has used uniformed police to fill the position of school safety officers in an effort to protect students. And as in many cities, the cops themselves have presented a significant threat to the safety and welfare of the students.
The landmark lawsuit challenges the conduct and behavior of police officers and school safety officers (SSOs) serving in the NYPD’s School Safety Division. It was filed on behalf of five middle school and high school students who were physically abused and wrongfully arrested at school by NYPD personnel.
Plaintiff Daija, 13, is an eighth-grade student at Lou Gehrig Middle School in the Bronx. On Oct. 7, 2009, Daija was unlawfully arrested by SSOs following a confrontation in front of her school initiated by two adult strangers who had threatened her. An SSO instructed Daija to go into the school with the strangers. Frightened, Daija told the SSO that she preferred to wait outside for her mother who was coming to pick her up.
In response, the SSO grabbed Daija by the arm, handcuffed her, forcefully threw her down and pinned her to the ground. Daija sat handcuffed at a desk until her mother managed to find her. No charges were filed against her. Daija required medical attention as a result of the assault.
The ACLU press release provides the typical examples of children being arrested for such heinous crimes as writing on a desk or talking on a cellphone. The SSOs aren’t subject to school supervision, and can exercise the full panoply of law enforcement powers without any school oversight. And they do.
And then there is the fact that school safety officer isn’t exactly a plum cop assignment. There are very few opportunities to get a gold shield in the hallway of PS 126. This is a dumping ground. While there are no doubt cops who want to help students, there are far more who the police want to get out of their precincts because they are just lousy cops, or pissed off a superior, or create problems wherever they go. Where better to bury them than in public schools?
It’s not that school administrators have demonstrated any great finesse at dealing with students and minor disciplinary issues, but at least they are generally disinclined to cuff them and throw them to the ground. Does it fill the SSOs with pride that they beat up some kid for talking in the hallway? Apparently so.
H/T Kathleen, our hinterlands correspondent (doing some slumming)
“When one of our clients was 11 years old, she was handcuffed and perp-walked into a police precinct for doing nothing more than doodling on a desk in erasable ink. Amazingly, no one in the police department or the school seemed to think there was anything wrong with that,” said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, senior attorney at Dorsey & Whitney and co-counsel on the case. “It’s a sad day when you need to resort to a lawsuit to keep an 11-year-old from being arrested for drawing on her desk, but in this case it is clear there is no alternative.”A few considerations that seem to elude city police departments that use their cops to maintain order within schools. These are children, not perps. The point isn’t to feed the school to prison pipeline, but to protect them so that they can be educated. Still, kids are kids, and they tend to do kid things. Dealing with children requires a modicum of thoughtfulness and patience, and a good deal of restraint. Not things that cops, in general, deem important qualities.
And then there is the fact that school safety officer isn’t exactly a plum cop assignment. There are very few opportunities to get a gold shield in the hallway of PS 126. This is a dumping ground. While there are no doubt cops who want to help students, there are far more who the police want to get out of their precincts because they are just lousy cops, or pissed off a superior, or create problems wherever they go. Where better to bury them than in public schools?
It’s not that school administrators have demonstrated any great finesse at dealing with students and minor disciplinary issues, but at least they are generally disinclined to cuff them and throw them to the ground. Does it fill the SSOs with pride that they beat up some kid for talking in the hallway? Apparently so.
H/T Kathleen, our hinterlands correspondent (doing some slumming)
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“There are very few opportunities to get a gold shield in the hallway of PS 126.”
Perhaps not, but there’s always the chance of catching the next Cindy Mauro and Alini Brito in action.