Posted on 08/31/2004 4:09:27 AM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
An Espanola third-grader was handcuffed and arrested by police after hitting another student with a basketball, the child's mother and her lawyer say.
"The Legislature never envisioned that the law would be used to lock an 8-year-old in any jail, especially an adult jail," attorney Sheri Raphaelson said.
"This is the most egregious example of poor judgment by police that I've ever seen in my 15 years of practicing law," she said.
According to a juvenile citation for disorderly conduct, Jerry Trujillo was arrested Thursday and booked into the Espanola jail after he "got out of control and refused to go back to class."
Police Chief Richard Guillen, who was not at work Thursday, said he had few details but that officers "couldn't deal with" the boy before taking him into custody.
He said he had conflicting accounts of where the boy was held and for how long.
It's illegal to keep a juvenile at an adult facility.
Espanola school Superintendent Vernon Jaramillo said the incident was being investigated. He expected a report from the school's principal, Corinne Salazar.
The boy's mother, Angelica Esquibel, said he was sent to the school office Thursday when he raised his voice to a teacher after hitting another child with the basketball.
Esquibel, who works next door to the school, said she was called to the office, and that Jerry began crying and saying he wanted to go home.
She said a school counselor wanted him to return to class, and that when the boy ran outside and started crying louder, the counselor told him if he wasn't going to be in school, she was going to call police.
The counselor told him officers would handcuff him and put him in a cell "until he changes his attitude," Esquibel said.
Guillen said he'd been told the mother agreed police should be called. She said she told school officials not to call them.
Two officers tried to tell Jerry to go back to class and told him he had a choice — class or jail, Esquibel said. When the boy got upset and loud, they handcuffed him, she said.
The police report says Jerry was arrested, taken to jail, booked and released to his parents.
Esquibel said that when she arrived at the police station, he was standing against a wall, crying.
He told her he was placed "in a dark room with a window, a metal toilet and a metal sink," and that inmates banged on the window "saying they were going to get him and cussing," she said. He said officers told him to stop crying or they'd let the inmates get him, she said.
And don't forget to up his Ritalin dose and give him some new Xbox games to keep him quiet.
These idiots who run schools are always showing that they may have book sense but no common sense. A kid who brings an aspirin into school is treated as if he or she brought in a kilo of cocaine. A kid with a toy gun, or even using his fingers to simulate a toy gun, is treated the same as if he brought in a loaded .45.
For the life of me, I can't figure out what the agenda behind this could possibly be, except that school administration seems to be the ultimate refuge for ninnies.
My son(8) has a friend who weighs 100 lbs. He is also 5'2. And the kid turned 8 in April
The school could have handled the situation better. The police could have followed the law. If this incident is true, she deserves to get a chunk of change.
Notice that neither the "counselor" nor the police officers are named.
Yessiree! We got a free press, oh yeah. Wanna buy a bridge?
FOR WHAT.....unauthorized Dodgeball?
An 8 year old shouldn't be so out of control that he's hitting the other kids and running around --- the mother should have been homeschooling him or finding him a school that could handle his special needs.
A woman was telling me how she had to get her 2nd grader out of the school because he became terrified to go because another boy was threatening to kill him -- she thought her son was being ridiculous until she went to the school and saw that kid's parents -- so she had her kid moved. The other boy's parents were gang members.
Huh?
I wonder why the boy's dad isn't involved in this incident --- and it's interesting how the boy and the mother don't have the same last name. I wonder if the mother and boy aren't lying about a lot of what happened.
I would wonder why a mother who sends an uncontrollable kid to school should profit from doing that --- and why doesn't his dad seem to be getting involved in the kid being arrested? Maybe he didn't care that he was.
Oh such Esquibel over nothing. Send him home.
arrested by police after hitting another student with a basketball
Have a nice day,
Pete
(gasp) You would HIT that poor child? Hasn't he been through enough? Do we have to damage his self-esteem too? /sarcasm, for those of you in No-Sarcasm Land
I can't even begin to believe what I'm reading here.
You have a nice day too.
Bye.
When I was in school, the teacher would have grabbed you by the ear, walked you back to class and warmed your bottom with the paddle.
When you got home you would get another bottom warming from your parents.
up to the point where he was put into a cell, the mom is probably lying about her side of things, or embellishing them. But is it possible to deny they put him in the adult jail?
Avoiding liability. Schools are damned if they and damned if they don't. There's a lawyer waiting to take a bite out their ass either way.
He hit someone "with a basketball." In other words, he threw a basketball. (Throwing balls is normal 8-year-old behavior, not "special needs." So is running.) What was a basketball doing in the classroom, anyway? Then he got upset and wanted to go home when the school authorities made a murder trial out of it.
The adults in this situation seem much more "out of control" than the child, IMO.
Get all the kids out of that madhouse. And give us our tax money back, or spend it on roads. The unemployed former education employees can work on the roads. (/dream sequence)
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