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!'"
“Dennis Rivera’s mother, Jasmina Vasquez, told the Daily News.”
Well I can see part of the problem already.
“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.’”
What? If a school official of any kind refused to release my child to me or to my designate then there would be (at least) one fewer school official in this world... and quickly too.
Exactly! However the rules laid out in IDEA mandate this problem to continue. When a child throws a chair, destroys property, injures another child, or attacks the teacher, the “liberal mindset” is “what did the teacher do to make the child behave that way?”
I thought the liberal mindset was to drug the kids.....
It’s normal to punch administrators, break the glass in doors, etc.?
What planet is that behavior normal on?
Depends on the kid and it depends on the drug....count me as one of those who sees a lot of positive results in those who truly need it.
Oh FGS - the kid is 5 yo, and the school is probably as much of a prison as a mental hospital for an involuntarily restrained patient.
No, I will never condone lack of discipline, but the kid was 5. Handcuffs and mental hospitals are not places for a child. There are many other forms of discipline that are far more effective.
I think the cops did the right thing. The handcuffs are to keep the child from hurting himself or someone else. If the kid is at risk of jumping out of a moving car or hurting someone else, I think the handcuffs are appropriate.
You have that spot on. The kid needs a different environment.
I suspect we are talking about a kid doomed already.
Note the speech problems. I’d bet this kid is not having an easy time in school with the other kids, and he has limited verbal ability, so he acts out physically.
He just needs a different environment and a different type of disciplinary action. Handcuffs and a mental hospital are not it.
I agree, there are a lot of messed up kids out there, I mean VERY messed up. Suicidal at 8, killing a sibling before they’re 5 (and I’m not making this up). For sure the adults (parents or lack there of) is the cause. And ya know what, their own parents often don’t want them back after admission either.
But bottom line is they need a different environment than a standard school. And they need adults who understand what factors (adults) went into messing them up in the first place.
There just aren’t enough folks out there willing to foster/adopt/parent these kids either. It’s not an easy job at all.
A couple of swats on the butt will cause irreparable harm to a child.
But physically restraining a child by securing his hands behind his back and taking him to a psych ward for a mental evaluation is perfectly fine.
Got it.
The number of people on this thread who blame the parents without even batting an eye at the school environment is amazing.
How do you figure that asthma and a speech problem are parenting problems ? Silly me, I believe those are physical problems.
Understood. I can certainly see a situation where this sort of physical restraint is a reasonable choice.
My real issue is that the school took it upon itself to send a 5-year-old to a psych ward, and also refused to hand over the child to his caregiver. It seems to me that this was inappropriate.
Yeah. I’m not saying it’s a 100% for sure, but the stats are against him. Argh-— I remember my brother saying he was 11 when he realized his life was over. They know.
How was this mother indifferent ? She went right to the boy when called.
ADD at 5? You’ve gotta be sh*tting me... Isn’t that just called, being FIVE...
They never even called the mother until AFTER the kid was taken away.
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