Kid Arrested For Doodling Now Suing For $1 Million

Amazing. And the above from a teacher?

Perhaps the answer really is tazing all students who write on their desks?

As an educator, I hope this kid does win this lawsuit. Calling the police is not an acceptable way to deal with behavior issues in school. There are plenty of schools that have systems in place to deal with these kinds of behavior issues within the school — systems that result in learning and growth rather than humiliation and anger. This student has learned that the system is messed up. School should be a place where students feel that the system cares enough about them that it will hold them accountable for their actions in order to help them become better people. Schools cannot create that atmosphere by sending problem students out of the building in handcuffs.

I disagree. When your rights are violated by cops, there is plenty of precedent for getting as much as you can out of the ordeal. I certainly would, even if I knew it was a ridiculous amount. This won’t encourage kids to write on desks, it will discourage police departments to mistreat students.

Point of information: at least in the kid’s version of events, she wrote on the desk in water-based marker. In other words, it washed off.

IMO: clearly the school was out of order; this is likely the only way that they (and other schools) will be deterred from this and similar stupidities. I wish them good luck.

A million seems pretty light for a NY lawsuit.

Better go for 10 million.

Cops/City Admin’s/School Admin’s (which of course are mostly taught in public schools) are stupid, and without sufficient zeros on the paperwork won’t take the lesson seriously.

School’s are in place to guide youth, not to suppress it. This girl was sharing her creative vision in an improper way. Rather than crushing that vision with arrests, she should be shown different ways to express.

Make her clean the desk and buy her a sketchbook. But now, this overreaction has caused panic, and the parents think an epidemic is in place. Both sides are wrong, and I’ll bet the girl thinks so too. As a student artist, I feel like being arrested for drawing would be pretty sweet.

Well here is another educator’s tuppence worth.

I have no idea how, but somehow the chain of command and responsibility has become really screwed up at this institution. I imagine that somewhere in the school’s charter is a document called ‘Student Disciplinary Procedure’ which outlines what the students may be punished for and exactly how they may be punished. Any establishment without one (and a sibling publication called something like ‘Student Complaints Procedure’) is asking for trouble.

Then, as part of the enrolment process the student signs that they and their parents have read these ToCs and will abide by them. As will the institution.

Situation sorted. How did this get so out of hand?

One. Million. Dollars. In a situation like this, start at a $100 million, and try for $10-20 million.

The school administration was stupid to call the police. The police were even more stupid for effecting the arrest- I would have laughed in the principal’s face if presented with this when I was a deputy. The police are becoming more and more like vicious, stupid thugs.

I remember doodling all the time in school on the desks. Names, dates, ink rivers flowing from one corner to the next…Who cared? No one.

do not waste my tax dollars on this BS trial. $1 million my ASS. eff you, greedy little girl. you did something bad, you paid the consequences even if they were a bit excessive. grow a pair and get over it.

The girl was out of line, the school was out of line, and the police were out of line…punish the people who were wrong, not the tax payers who will eventually pay for court cost and $1 million dollars.

This is a case of the dumb leading the dumb and we will have to pay for it.

I don’t generally comment on these things, but I am particularly frustrated by the situation at hand. This girl was bored with her class, and dealt with her boredom by vandalizing school property. Let me repeat that: vandalizing school property. Let’s imagine that you have invited a stranger into your home for some specific purpose — say, to fix the plumbing — and, in the process, they decide that the job is boring and go on to take a Sharpie to your walls. Is it over-reacting to have them arrested? This wasn’t an artistic statement, it was an example of this girl’s callous disregard for her teachers, the maintenance staff, and any student who has been frustrated by stained, filthy desks. I can’t comment on her treatment after arrest, as I am not familiar enough with the rights one should expect to retain in such a situation; it rather sounds as if the police might have something for which to answer in that department. What I am saying is that the arrest of a vandal is not worth a million dollars. Not by a long shot.

I find it telling that she thought she might get detention or something like that but NOT THIS. (This was how it was reported the first time I read about this, I am assuming she hasn’t changed her story.) This means she clearly understood that what she was doing was wrong. She knew it was wrong enough to get punished but that the punishment she was expecting wasn’t enough to deter her DELIBERATE defacing of someone else’s property. Now she is mad that she was punished in a harsher manner than what she expected. This wasn’t idle doodling, absent minded even, it was deliberate and consequences were considered.

Or maybe the next time she is contemplating deliberately breaking the law and defacing property, someone else paid for, she will have second thoughts. I don’t generally subscribe to the idea of punishment as a deterrence (very little evidence to support this). But in this case she freely admitted that she knew she was doing something wrong and was willing to be disciplined for it, just not to this extent. But she did break the law. And she did cost the district and the rest of the community in property and time. These costs add up, more than people generally understand (removing gum from campuses alone can cost thousands a year). If the cost is higher for her and other students maybe we, the community, can save time and money. Even alternate programs to deal with discipline cost everyone time and money. Money not spent on the kids who aren’t defacing property. Either way there is cost, and this way she had to share some of it.

Or how about instead of giving this girl and her mother money, they make the mother pay for another desk.

I bet the school was making an example of her. School win. Sue fail.

why was the girl bored? i think she should be supported in expressing her excess energy creatively rather than violently. if she manages to do both, listen to the teacher and doodle at the same time, let her! i spent most my classes in school drawing at the same time and my teachers came to accept that i was well able to follow the classes.
also, “vandalizing” is a matter of definition. if doodling on your school desk gets a 12 year old arrested in handcuffs, chained to a pole and separated from her mother, something is DEFINITELY screwed up in the system.
since students have pretty much always been drawing on their desks, why not be consequent and provide paper surfaces and crayons? a well trained teacher could learn many things about each individual student by analyzing the drawings after class.

I doodled in school all the time. Most of the time it was on paper. The few times I absent-mindedly doodled on the desk, it was with pencil, and I always just wiped it off with my hand afterwards.

The one or two times I got caught, the punishment was staying after class or after school to clean the desk. I always got “called out” in front of the class, which led to enough embarrassment that I only doodled on the desk once or twice after getting caught the first time, and never again after getting caught the second time.

Getting arrested is ridiculously excessive. So is suing. The cops should have apologized, the girl’s parents should outwardly have said “this is absurd and we accept the apology” but at home the girl should have been told “pay attention in class and don’t doodle on the desk again.”

Clearly she broke the law. Why should she not be punished. If she did not want to be hauled off to jail for vandalism, she should not have committed the crime. I have five kids, and I teach them that consequences follow your actions. It may SEEM excessive, but we all know there is more to the story. Maybe rather than suing the school and the cops, her mom could teach her to avoid trouble.

Surely there has to be a better way to deal with this kind of problem, other than calling the Police to arrest a child?
On the other hand, asking to be paid $1 Million for, essentially, committing an act of criminal vandalism, doesn’t seem right either.
FAIL and FAIL.

@Grelf Erasable markers are only erasable on the surfaces they were intended to be used on. Crayola makes an erasable marker which only erases on paper.
Dry erase markers only work on the dry erase surfaces.

Are we to assume that all the desks in the school were otherwise in pristine condition? Otherwise surely EVERY child who doodles on a desk should be arrested and perp walked, then handcuffed to a pole in what amounts to a cell and separated from their mother.

As has been said there is a clear diciplinary procedure for situations like this, why was it not followed? If an example must be set make her stay behind after class and clean the desk or fine her the cost of a replacement.

The fact is the girl was 12, not an adult and so shouldn’t be treated like one. Even if an adult sat down in an office and doodled on a desk they wouldn’t be arrested and escorted from the building in cuffs, get real.

At that young an age an experience like that is traumatic and as has been said wouldn’t incline the student to behave, but to instead view the system as broken and callous. And when a kid starts to view themselves as unnecessarily persecuted by a callous system you get a spiral of delinquency. Such an astonishingly poor call…

Oh god she’s 12? Someone delete my post please. She looks like 18.

1 million dollars is no where near excessive.

To me, that’s getting off kind of light.

i’m italian.what i see in these last years is that you American have the situation out of control.after what happened you in 2001,(correctly) decided to be more careful,more controls,to have more security and more suppressive;but u have to understand that this is not always useful and that anything must be appropriate to the situation.i’m from Sicily,and history showed how severe laws don’t keep people away from mafia;instead,is proved that educating young generations is the only thing that pays.
use mind before the force and the arm of the law,SPEAK!,reproach(of course),but never a violence like this for a so unimportant thing(a kid with a water-based marker…)
concerning the lawsuit,1 million is ok(or few)thinking about the consequences on her child’s mind:i wouldn’t be surprised if she will have mental disorders after this episode…
bye

Wow you guys have it cut out for you over there. Situation out of control.
This girl looks set to be the next Tia Tequila for sure.
Fame is poison, to seek it out in such a way is all kinds of wrong.
Lessons will never be learnt, past the point now.

let me see where commonsense prevails. The school called the authorities because they could not handle the girl drawing on the desk. Why wouldn’t the teacher just send the kid to the corner or to principal’s office? Calling the police for this incidence, what a show of ignorance.