Girl Arrested for Doodling

[tygerarmy]

Girl Arrested for Doodling Sues New York City

(April 3) -- When 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez was caught doodling on her desk at Junior High School 190 in Queens, New York, she expected detention and an afternoon on desk-cleaning duty. Instead, she was arrested, led out of her school in handcuffs and detained at a local police precinct for hours, she said.

Two months after the incident, Gonzalez and her mother, Maraima Comacho, are suing the New York City Education Department and the New York Police Department for $1 million in damages, claiming excessive use of force and violation of the girl's rights in the ordeal, which Comacho has called a "nightmare."

WTF in NYC?

[HarleyThomas1002]

And here I draw and write on my desk all the time.

I've taken my desktop for granted.

[terri]

Can you say "way overreacting"? (On the part of the school, that is.)

I'm waiting for the eventual "Law & Order" episode.

[tolpuddlemartyr]

Only very rarely is it necessary to involve the police in a classroom situation, and only as a last resort.

If a kid is carrying a weapon, maybe! If a kid seriously assaults or sexually assaults a staff member or another student, or if a student assaults or threatens to assault with a weapon, if course the school should contact the police. Same if a student or group of students torture some kid and posts it up on to YouTube.

For a very limited range of property offences police involvement might be justified, for example if a kid steals something of considerable value like someones laptop or car or seriously interferes with safety equipment risking life to themselves or others, then yes police involvement would be justifiable.

But, doodling on a desk? What?

I'm a teacher and that is a stupid overreaction and a waste of police time to boot.

[skyfire]

This is why so many people hate "zero tolerance" policies in schools: because all too often, they end up as "zero common sense" policies.

It's also part of the reason why so many people are eager to move their kids into either private schools or home schooling.

[Bigg]

zero tolerance, the only policy that truly works other than abstinence only and stoning.

[Thejebusfire]

My friends and I used to write on tons of things at school. Our desks, our textbooks, the bathroom stalls, no one gave a fuck.

[Caitshidhe]

Hucking fell. When I was in school and they caught you doodling on the desks they'd make you stay after school for a week and clean every desk in your wing, just so you'd see how hard it is to get all those marks off. Way to overreact there, New York. Shit. There's no reason to call the cops in unless students have weapons or are actively beating one another. JUST MAKE HER CLEAN ALL THE DESKS AND MOVE ON.

*shakes head*

[Admiral Lithp]

Now Comacho wants the City to pay for their mistake, to the tune of $1 million for the ordeal that led to her daughter's suspension and a trip to family court, where Gonzalez was given eight hours of community service and ordered to write a book report and an essay about what she learned from the experience.

If that were me, those would be something to the tune of "the school staff & cops here are a bunch of incompetent fucks" over & over again.

Then I'd probably get put on death row, or something.

[Tiger]

$1 million seems excessive.

[tygerarmy]

So was her punishment. Graffiti is a felony, calling the police and handcuffing her, taking her out of the school, leaving her handcuffed to a pole for more than two hours and a trip to family court, where Gonzalez was given eight hours of community service and ordered to write a book report and an essay about what she learned from the experience is excessive.

If the school had just given her a book report, an essay and/or made her clean her desk/every desk in the classroom that'd be one thing. One million is a lot but how much is right? I think NYC should pay for all future schooling and books. Everything from her going to a private junior high, high school and any and all college she attends during her life.

[Mira]

Where I come from, drawing dicks and swastikas on the ceiling is a slap on the wrist.

Now, smearing feces on the bathroom walls is an ISS. Bringing a gun to school/to a football game is when the expulsion and police business comes to play.

[HarleyThomas1002]

Apr 4, 2010 14:08:54 GMT -5 Thejebusfire said:

My friends and I used to write on tons of things at school. Our desks, our textbooks, the bathroom stalls, no one gave a fuck.

I had to pick garbage for an hour when I wrote on a locker.

It could have also been becquse I wrote "I hate myself and I want to die" on a locker. Which I thought was funny as Hell.

The student whose locker I wrote on, the councelr who thought he wrote it, some other person, and the principal all thought otherwise.

No one cared that in the same day I also wrote God is Gay on another locker.

[m52nickerson]

I'm going to have to agree with Sky, Zero Tolerance = Zero Common Sense.

All these policies do is protect people from having to make judgment calls.

[spaniel]

Wait, how does she write a book report about it? No book was brought into play.

Bad, bad New York. I live in New York, and I'm sad that such stupid shit happened here. The desks in my school are covered with doodles and scratches, but no one gives a shit.