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!'"
The parent was on the way, but sent the babysitter (who was closer) as her agent. They had not called the mother until after handcuffing the kid and deciding to send him off to the psych ward. The babysitter regularly picked up the child and yet they wouldn’t release the kid to the babysitter or wait for the parent to take custody....yet the kid was not dangerous enough to leave handcuffed on the way to the psych ward. It doesn’t add up.
Plus, see 105.
And there are legitimate legal procedures in place for such things, to provide citizens protection from arbitrary State power and abuse.
But at the muzzle of a gun, we are forced to pay taxes to support a school system that can arbitrarily decide by fiat that a kid needs to go to the psych ward over the parent? Yikes...what a system. Have FReepers gone so far left as to really support such an idea?
I’ll chip in my big money too...
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.
The did not choose to KEEP the child -- they did a sensible thing --rather than sending back to a home where it appears he was not getting proper discipline, they sent to a psycho ward to see if he was dangerous, and should be kicked the hell out of school before he hurt or killed someone -- then they would get sued for damned sure.
I missed the part about following an appropriate procedure to obtain an evaluation from the psych ward.
Or, the part about “we didn’t have the chance to do so, because this was the first time this happened.”
Or, the kid was so dangerous, we had to keep him in handcuffs.
Yeah -- and that is a helluva big part of the problem.
No — just the sign of a brat that needs a good butt-bustin’.
They got law enforcement involved?
*barf*
Yep,
Me ADD,
Sibling & Father Ring of Fire ADHD.
I believe the fadda probably did his walking with his feet.
Read it again. You probably missed something.
Considering that this is quite an unusual case, and seeing as how there are, as you say, "legitimate legal procedures in place," I'd say that you've engaged in a bit of hyperbolic excess with this comment.
The folks at this school may well have screwed the pooch. Or not: as is apparently ALWAYS the case with stories like this, the real facts are probably not being reported.
Will you just shut up about the beatings? We got your point the first time -- and it was idiotic then, too.
by requiring a psychological evaluation.
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Would a private school be able to haul a child off to a hospital (in handcuffs) for a psychological evaluation?
I doubt it!
So?....If a private principal could not do this, then why should a government employee of a government school?
Government schools should be held to the same standards of behavior as those in the private sector.
Solution: Abolish government schools. Privatize universal K-12 education.
Question: If you were a police officer with a pair of handcuffs, and you knew that it you grabbed hold of the brat, you might accidentally break one of his fingers, or make him cry and "traumaitze" him (whatever the hell that mens), what would you do? -- handcuff the snot or take a chance on getting sued or fired, and let his angry mommy ruin your life for you?
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Exactly!
I doubt that a private school could get away with treating a child like this.
Solution: Get rid of the government schools. We need a completely private system of K-12 education.
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."
Twas NOT a cop that handcuffed this child and from the article I see they have not expressed support of the action. Seems to me there are methods of handling a five year old kindergartener short of handcuffs and the padded wagon.
you people seem to be missing a lot of thing — mainly, what do YOU do with a brat on a rampage in a school full of toddlers — and you know damned well tht if you lay a finger on the little angel, his parents will sue you butt off????
You cn bet on it -- they'd toss his little butt out and tell his parents to go somewhere else.
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