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!'"
Because of the indifferent mother, someday this boy will mature in a prison and be forever a millstone around the taxpayers' necks.
Maybe they should have hauled the parents in also; cuffed of course. There’s far too much dysfunction & parents lacking proper parenting skills in America; hold them accountable for the abuse situation.
Today, they expect the schools to provide the parenting role; what’s wrong with this picture?
You're making it out as if the kid kicked out the entire panel. Most likely the kid threw something at the glass and it got a crack in it. Not a sign of superman strength.
I remember the look from my father. That’s pretty much all it took.
I suppose the nanny state doesn’t agree with parents handling their kids.
Ack. That's nasty. It's too bad you would refer to a child that way.
Yeah, cuz physiology-based problems are the parents' fault.
However, when an out-of-control little package goes on an anger rampage, what is an authority figure supposed to do?
As I stated above: you had to be there.
No corporal punishment is allowed anymore.
That would be “cruel.”
Legalistic rules apply when students misbehave.
You ask them “politely” to behave and they refuse.
And so law enforcement becomes the only option.
A police state.
Wait until this child becomes a teenager.
DEFINITELY! We need the GOVERNMENT to step in and teach people how to behave! The State is so wonderful in parenting skills...especially as we build it more into a Nanny.
We’ve admitted OOC ADD kids to the crisis unit. Erm, they’re a very very very special kind of out of control kid-— think Loony Toons Tasmanian Devil and hitting them just doesn’t work. You basically are fwamming away on a kid who barely notices you’re there and really doesn’t get cause and effect....because the cause is long past by the time the effect takes place.
I’ve seen them not even stop to eat.
I’m not saying a father wouldn’t be a good thing. What works best is a lot of one on one attention, structure and consistency. (And yes, sometimes meds if nothing else works).
Also, kids are growing bigger. I’ve seen a 90#, 4 year old. Granted, I usually see the kids off the charts in either direction. So his age could be right.
Release the child to its parent.
Is that such a difficult concept?
Even at five. They not only hit teachers, but they will also attack other students. They also usually disrupt the entire class with their tantrums. They can throw things off the teachers desk, destroy materials, hit people, throw chairs - and God help the teacher that reacts “inappropriately” - sometimes just by touching the student. The entire class, with their parents, can end up in a war against a young child. I’ve see it.
Often the child is autistic or something. And the school HAS to provide services. That means money, money, money that the parents feel entitled to. And while the school gets more cash per disabled child, a really rambunctious child drains school resources. So they really don’t want him there.
Can you imagine this child when he is 10? 13? The school really doesn’t want to deal with it. Their objective probably is to get the parents to place their child in another school. And they’ve accomplished that, haven’t they?
Kind of ironic that the elimination of corporal punishment has led us down the road of these even more barbaric treatments.
That has nothing to do with your reference to him at age five.
“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.’
Nice assumption your making, essentially calling this woman a slut although you have no knowledge of her or the circumstances. It takes two to make a baby, and the man who sleeps with a woman without consideration for the possible results is just as bad as she is. For all you know the father was killed in Iraq defending his country.
And while we’re throwing bad parenting stones at the current generation lets not forget their parents. The baby boomers who have given us a huge mess everywhere we look.
“Yeah, cuz physiology-based problems are the parents’ fault.”
Yes, some are.
If it is indeed reinforced glass (which is standard in NYC public schools for fire code reasons), it isn't superhuman strength - but he either threw something quite heavy quite hard that could have seriously injured someone, or he deliberately pounded on the glass with a heavy object until it broke.
That ain't normal. And, like I said, that is a suspiciously large 5 year old as described.
BTW - there are a ton of immigrant kids in NYC schools who do not have a birth certificate on file but only a parental affidavit as to their age.
These are often lowballed by the parents to allow kids to have less challenging schoolwork and for baseball purposes.
Oh, I understand that.
They schools want to be parents and make decisions about what children can see, do, attempt, etc without the responsibility of having to discipline them also.
Zero tolerance = Zero thought = zero responsibility.
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