Posted on 01/25/2008 5:28:47 AM PST by fweingart
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!'"
Juvenile delinquents now commit more serious crimes and they are incapable of giving respect to adults, neighbors or teachers!
When kids act up in class, refuse to shut up or start tearing up the classroom what are school authorities to do? You can’t touch him or raise your voice lest he be "traumatized" but he should be able to traumatize others?
He doesn't learn respect at home & then parents demand teachers do THEIR job of disciplining AND educating them.
When the brat grows up and insults another kid? He'll probably get shot.
Do they have special kid-sized handcuffs now? Maybe with Barney stickers...
Now, I can't comment on this particular child, but I will say that there are kids with special needs that should not be in standard schools. Schools are not capable of handling some of these kids with physical, mental, and/or behavioral problems. The mismatch between student and school can sometimes lead to egregious mishandling of difficult situations. It's bad for everyone.
“Wonder what the ‘father’ has to say?”
Probably the #1 reason the boy has no sense of discipline... no father in the house... my son has mild autism and as soon as he starts misbehaving (and you can tell when he’s doing things just to rile us, the parents) my husband just gives him a ‘look’ and he settles down.
The problem here is that there are not enough fathers out there to discipline their kids. Moms are usually ‘soft’. Thank goodness that God made daddies.
It takes a Village, mom... Get with it.
His mother probably couldn't identify him in a police lineup.
Fathers we have plenty of.... what we need is dads.
He's 5 and he's 4'3" and 68 pounds. The average 7 year old is 4" and 60 lbs. This kid is not 5 - his age may be misreported by his parents, a very common occurrence in NYC public schools.
He's 5 and he can break the thick glass of NYC public school doors (my mother, BTW, was this particular school's librarian about 15 years ago).
That's crazy. If true, that is one kid who other children are not safe around.
“Dennis - who suffers from speech problems, asthma and attention deficit disorder “
Maybe I’m just a trogladite, but it seems to me that most attention deficit disorders could be cured by old fashioned attention to the seat of pants. Sounds like this kid needs a good butt bustin’. It’s a better solution than ritilin.
A school safety agent? Do they have the same authority as the police?
I don't believe there is anything normal about this unfortunate 5 year-old.
He is saddled with a mother who probably has no idea where the father is, but he does appear to bear the father's surname.
This is a case where you had to be there to see the ferocious eruption on the part of a seriously disturbed little demon.
Discipline is no longer doled out by teachers and principles, but by LEOs.
LEOs do not have the temprement for disciplining small children. Most LEOs join the force to combat crime, not discipline small children in an educational setting.
This reflects in the way they handle disciplinary situations in schools.
You don't handcuff a 5 year old boy, you spank his behind and send him back to class.
I know plenty of them - my kids classmates' and my neighbors' and relatives' kids.
Not one of them has, to my knowledge, broken a three-quarter inch thick piece of reinforced glass in their school.
That is not normal rambunctiousness. That's a kid who's got serious problems which, if ignored, will get him or someone else killed one day.
Maybe you’re right... since who has ever heard of a 5 year old throwing a tantrum, kicking someone in the shins, throwing something? Nahhh....
“Dennis - who suffers from speech problems, asthma and attention deficit disorder”
Translation - This poor kid has had lousy parents.
What a dive our society has taken when we have to have full-time security personnel in an elementary school.
Unfortunately our society has become absolutely polluted with the offspring of useless parents who procreate then abdicate. Shove the disruptive example of their copulation onto the government schools which are staffed by teachers who are barely able to handle the curriculum, let alone discipline someone's mistake.
Referring to this as normal 5 year old behavior is a little silly. There’s nothing normal about a 5 year old having the temerity to try and face down a school full of adults. While I think the school overreacted it was probably to keep from being sued. Restraint is seen legally as protection for both parties. It appears to me that we have a child used to getting his own way.
The mother was willing to take the child home and they refused to let her have her own child. So, you’re perfectly fine with the State withholding the child from his parent?
Sorry, but logic doesn’t back up your support for the police state. Your claim that the problem here is that the authorities are handcuffed doesn’t hold water when they refused the request—it showed that they CHOSE to keep the child.
If you don’t have written approval from the parent to administer corporal punishment that will get you sued.
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