Group sues on behalf of child in paper gun incident
Irvington case reopens zero tolerance debate
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
BY KEVIN C. DILWORTH AND REGINALD ROBERTS
Star-Ledger Staff
The Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based civil liberties organization, is taking a second New Jersey school district to court for what it sees as overzealous school officials overstepping their bounds in handling student conduct.
The institute filed a lawsuit against the Irvington Board of Education on behalf of one of two boys arrested nearly two years ago under the district's "zero tolerance" policy for playing with a paper gun.
The suit, filed last month in Superior Court in Newark, charges that Hamadi Alston, who was then 8 years old, was falsely arrested, maliciously prosecuted and had his rights of free speech violated. He and his classmate, Jaquill Shelton, were arrested by police March 15, 2001. Marc Shelton, Jaquill's father, has a pending lawsuit he filed against the school board in March 2002.
The Rutherford Institute filed a suit in 2000 on behalf of four Sayreville kindergartners who were suspended in a similar situation in which they were playing a schoolyard game of cops and robbers by pointing their fingers like guns.
The two Irvington boys, who were both second-graders at the Augusta Street School, threatened their classmates with a piece of notebook paper folded to resemble a gun, school officials said. Alston stood on a desk, pointing the paper gun at his classmates, saying "I'm going to kill you," they said.
The boys were taken to the principal's office, then arrested by police for making terroristic threats. They said they were merely playing a game of cops and robbers.
The arrests reopened a national debate on zero tolerance policies enacted by school boards following the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., in 1999 in which two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide.
"The Irvington school district's zero tolerance policy was arbitrary and capricious," said Stephen Latimer, a Hackensack attorney hired by the Rutherford Institute to represent Alston. Also named in the suit are the police officers who arrested the boys, Superintendent of Schools Ernest Smith and other school officials involved in the incident, including the substitute teacher and acting school principal, who have since left the school.
School officials could not be reached for comment yesterday. But Ray Hamlin, whose law firm represents the school district, said he was not immediately aware of the lawsuit and that it had not been served to the district.
Latimer said the defendants should be notified of the lawsuit today.
Although Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith said he had not seen the suit, he said he would examine the role police played in the incident. The incident preceded his tenure in office, which began last July.
"I'm always interested in making sure that the police, or any other township employee, follow necessary procedures when it comes to carrying out what the law requires," the mayor said. "We will look at the ramifications of what took place and see if there's a need on our part to change any procedures."
But after the incident, school officials didn't see any need to change their procedures as they stood by their zero tolerance policy as a necessary evil of the times.
The Rutherford Institute, a national conservative, public-interest law firm, believes the policy is unnecessary.
"There was no crime here," said John Whitehead, president of the institute, which gained national attention for handling the Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against President Clinton. "The kids had no clue of what they had done. No one was threatened. What can you do with a piece of paper?"
Latimer said the boys should have been simply told to stop playing with the paper gun. "Maybe they should have been taken to the principal's office, but I doubt even that."
Ron Alston, Hamadi's father, said the incident had put a strain on his family. "We got taken through a whole lot," he said, adding the incident forced him to place his son in private school. "This incident was so crazy. Somebody has to be a watchdog over these children. No way in the world should 8-year-olds have been arrested for playing with a piece of paper."
The Rutherford Institute has taken on numerous cases around the country involving school districts' zero tolerance policies.
Whitehead said many have been settled out of court like the Florida case in which a 15-year-old student was suspended from school for loaning a classmate a nail clipper. The clipper was considered a weapon under the school district's zero tolerance policy.
Last year, however, a federal judge dismissed the Sayreville lawsuit, saying school officials were in their right to suspend the kindergartners.
Whitehead, who said the Rutherford Institute has been a pioneer in filing these type of suits, said the Sayreville case has been appealed to the 3rd District Court of Appeals. "It may be headed to the Supreme Court."
I sincerely hope it gets to the supreme court. Although, the district may be able to mount an insanity defense; they are a public school district, after all.
