Kid Handcuffed and Perp Walked for Doodling on Desk

Old enough to know better. If you wouldn't write on your own furniture at home, why is it ok to do at school?

@Hublub: no one is contesting the legitimacy of her action. It's plain stupid to think that just about ANYthing can be solved by parading people in handcuffs. "Eat your potatoes or 2 days of solitary confinement?"

Wow, talk about overreacting. Don't the police have anything else to be taking care of?

I cant believe i just read that comment by Hublub. When I was 12, everyone wrote on the school desks; I think the girl deserves a money compensation, definetely.

As a guy named Ron White says, regarding these so called "pillars of decency" from the Board of Education, "You just cant fix stupid".

WOW. I just can't believe the way schools are being run these days. An arrest should happen when it's a real serious crime like beatings, rape and murder. Not for petty things like doodling. Another example of why homeschooling is on the rise.

Haha Americans.

Dear Hublub:

Get a life. The police should not be reduced to babysitters. They should be tracking down murderers and rapists.

Jill

Maybe if they get her to drop out of school, she can become an uneducated cop.

your tax dollars at work!

I just can't help but wonder if the last name had anything to do with it.. Gonzalez?

Naw....

FIGHT THE POWER!!!

is that really a picture of the girl... if so.........nice

Lnothing7 wins creepy comment of the day award.

She's 12.

There's a Law & Order spin-off in this somewhere.

Yeah, I was going to say too...

Lnothing7, Chris Hansen would like you to have a seat over there...

It is not just the police, but the idiot teacher and principal who allowed this to happen.

Teacher: "Im telling the principal on you!"

Principal: "Im calling the police on you"

Police: "Duuuuuhhhh!!!"

I don't know how it works in New York, but when I was a deputy we were allowed to use sense and discretion. If the principal was so gung-ho to see this girl arrested, I would have laughed in his face and told him to ask the DA to convene a Grand Jury.

y'all realize that this is a totally logical extension of the zero-tolerance policies that have been creeping into the schools for the last couple decades right?

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Public School is a creepy institution, the State is segregating citizens by age and molding them to the advantage of corporations. What do you expext? Its thuggery.

Has this been a constant occurrence for this kid? mean, first few offenses this would be overreacting, but if she's constantly writing on things and overall knowingly getting into trouble, then getting hauled to jail might just be what she needs. For my tax dollars, though, an overreaction such as a week of in-house suspension might have been a better option.

That being said, I know as much about the case as anyone else here, which is next to zilch. Besides, after going to public school jail might seem like a vacation. :-P

I read 'drooling on the table'.

It felt so FBDO!

When I was in school all the desks had a tough Formica surface that could be wiped off easily. Has that changed?

Giving the girl a bottle of cleaning solution and a paper towel and saying "Please wipe off the desk." would have been sufficient. If a more severe punishment is desired she could stay after school and clean all the desks in the class room or write 200 words about why she shouldn't write on the desk.

Oh Mitch how old are you?! Now they're made of soft cushy rounded foamy non-offensive surfaces. I assume. We had the same thing you had when I was in school...

Seriously, in reports that say juvenile delinquency is up...this this will be counted. THIS with along with drugs, shoplifting, truancy and assault.
This girl is on a path to failure. SHE IS WHY I AM STUDYING CRIMINAL JUSTICE. Not.

Excellent! EXCELLENT!

"* Children would learn not to question authority or authority figures, be they governmental or corporate. (The practice of forcing pupils to raise their hand to ask a question – essentially asking permission to ask – was pioneered by Johann Hecker in 1740 in Prussia.)

* Children would learn to accept their lot in life and to limit their aspirations: the needs of the factories for workers and the army for soldiers would be met with compliant recruits.

* Children's primary loyalty and fear would be shifted from their mother and father to the king and the state. This would be ensured by the children learning very early that if they didn't attend school, special truant police would come after them, a force their parents were powerless to stop."

http://www.thomhartmann.com/2007/11/01/good-german-schools-come-to-america/

Ok I was a NYC public school product (graduated 05) now I am teaching HS in my old school. A.) this isn't the real Police they're part of the NYPD but don't carry guns or etc. B.) Graffiti is graffiti C.) I can tell you how this exchange when:

Teacher: What do you have in your hand?
Her: Nothing
T: I saw it, give me the marker
H: No
T: I am going to call the Dean
H: PSH! Try me
The teacher calls the dean the dean goes through the same bullshit the teacher just went through so he calls the School Safety Officer (S.S. for short I know, I know) they talk to her eventually she's stupid enough to argue or etc. so they put her in handcuffs.

Then her fat bovine of a mother (I saw her on the TV she is) comes to the school make a stink calls ABC 7 or whatever and those people talk to the mother but not the school officials or arresting officer. Then the nostalgic people talk about how great schools were when they were little and how "we did it back in my day". New York City has 1.1 million students taught in over 1,600 schools... that's the biggest educational system in the USA and this is only one city.

It probably wasn't cops who had to interrupt their pursuit of robbers, murderers, and rapists to come and get the little vandal. It was probably just the officers assigned to the school having something to for a change besides standing near the bathrooms trying to deter kids from smoking in there on their lunch breaks and calling the parents of the school skippers.

Vandalism is a real issue. It's not like she was arrested for something that wouldn't be criminal in another non-school setting. She damaged property that wasn't hers. If she did that in a restaurant or a store or library, she'd be in trouble. Why should there be no consequences when it's in a school?

Plus, if the school tolerates vandalism when it's relatively harmless graffiti like this girl's message, it will have opened itself up to having set a precedent of allowing vandalism. So when gangs decide to tag every surface of the school with something much less sweet, the school will not only be defaced, but it could be stuck having to prove that it's not enforcing it's no-graffiti policy in a racist or sexist or otherwise discriminatory manner.

I agree with the school and the cops on this one. Kids need to learn that there are consequences when you do bad things.

I dunno. I teach public school too. The kids "vandalize" there desks all the time. I don't really mind, because it wipes off easily, and half the time they clean it themselves.

Doesn't mean they go around tagging the walls though. In fact, I've never once seen that.

The main problem with our whole schooling philosophy is that it treats children as if they have no intelligence.

The other problem is it's basically conditioning them to go to prison.

I don't exaggerate when I say that the Public Schools are arguably the most evil institution our society has produced.

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these things are just so normal in china,its kind of
"desk culture"