Kid Arrested For Doodling Now Suing For $1 Million

Remember the story about a Junior High student who was handcuffed and perp walked for doodling on her desk? The 12-year-old schoolgirl and her mom are now suing for $1 million:

The legal papers describe Alexa's ordeal as an excessive use of force and a violation of her rights. "We want to stop this from happening to other young children in the future," said the family's lawyer, Joseph Rosenthal.

Alexa was perp-walked out of the school in front of her classmates with her hands locked in metal handcuffs behind her back.

Alexa's mother pleaded with the officers to accompany her daughter to the police precinct, but Camacho was told to go home and wait for a call.

Officers placed Alexa in "an enclosed room" at the precinct and handcuffed her to a pole for more than two hours, the papers note.

City lawyers declined to comment, but city officials acknowledged in February the arrest was a mistake.

Rachel Monahan of NY Daily News has more: Link (Photo: Pace for News)

So does one overreaction deserve another? Is this a reasonable quest for justice or simply a case of greed? What do you think?


As a teacher, this kid better not win this lawsuit. The kids at the school I teach at draw all over their desks with swear words, insults to other students and gang signs. If some kid and their mom WINS for being punished for ruining a school property, that's f'd up and all other kids at other schools will start to believe they can do it as they please...
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They arrested her as a deterrent to other students. They should be sued as a deterrent to repeat "mistakes".

At any rate, she has a right to pursue an offense against her person in civil court. This is America. If they don't think she has a case they can throw it out or the jury can return a low verdict.
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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.
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They arrested her as a deterrent to other students. They should be sued as a deterrent to repeat "mistakes".

At any rate, she has a right to pursue an offense against her person in civil court. This is America. If they don't think she has a case they can throw it out or the jury can return a low verdict.

As for students writing desks going "unpunished" because they aren't arrested - that's a fatuous argument. Detention, suspension, fines, clean-up punishments, revocation of extracurricular privileges like cheerleading or prom or assorted other punishments were and are available. When you come right down to it, the school can sue for destruction of property and recoup the expense of clean-up, repair, or replacement of damaged desks .
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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.
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The disgusting abuse of power by American police is getting out of hand. I fully endorse the lawsuit and actually think it should be more. As well as the officers fired. Out of a cannon. To the moon.
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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.
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@shadowfirebird - you have not seen the desks at schools lately then. Even water-based markers stain. If a desk has already been "vandalized", solvents have been used to clean the desk. Which leaves the surface a little less protected.

I think the whole thing has gotten out of hand. And it has now become a case of greed.
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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.
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whoops - the article said it was erasable marker. In my experience, they are usually dry erase markers, which only erase on the surfaces they were made to be used. If you would like to test the theory that the erasable marker "washes right off" May I suggest you doodle something on the hood of your car. And report back to us as to how well it washed right off.

If it was a Crayola erasable marker she used to doodle with - those are made for paper.
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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.
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The girl should have been asked to clean the desk or replace it if it was stained. The school overreacted but the girl should be held accountable for her actions. Suing for a million dollars is ridiculous.
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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?
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I'm sorry, but Handcuffed and arrested for what she did was indeed over the top. I hope she is successful in her lawsuit. I think it is stupid to carve your name into anything, and she wouldn't be the first person to do this. As a mother I would have been terrified to know my daughter was treated this way. If anything the Headmaster of this school should be fired for calling the cops. Useless fool.
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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.
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"So does one overreaction deserves another? Is this a reasonable quest for justice or simply a case of greed? What do you think?"

The lawsuit cannot be properly considered an "overreaction". In cases such as these the authorities need to be punished in the most public and practical way, i.e., public shaming and significant financial compensation to the victim. To just let this egregious action on the part of the school and the police to be dismissed with a simple apology would provide no incentive to ensure that such a thing not happen again.
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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.
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Police departments never learn from mistakes unless they cost a painful amount of money. I say go for ten million or more - and let the school district share the pain as well. Arresting her was a mistake, the handcuffs and perp walk were a mistake, and keeping her away from her mom seems unnecessarily jerky. A couple of damaged careers should help the lesson stick.
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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.
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Absolutely sue!!! It is the American way. Settle out of court for an undisclosed amount of course! But GET PAID!

A windfall like this only happens once, maybe twice, in a lifetime. Only a fool would pass this opportunity by.
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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.
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As a lefty pinko card carrying member of the ACLU liberal. I don't know what rights were violated. Not First Amendment - you have the freedom of speech on your own property not to vandalize that of others and in this case "public" property.

"Excessive?" No, a crime was, in fact, committed. You can be arrested for that. Was the punishment over the top? Yes, but her rights weren't violated. How about the rights of the other students to use school equipment that was not vandalized?

She was not held for an unreasonable amount of time. She wasn't formally punished by the state.

Why was she handcuffed? That's the question. Did she at anytime refused to go voluntarily?

I consider myself an artist at heart, but I don't tolerate vandalized. It is a defacing and denial of another person's property.
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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.
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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.
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Another ridiculous lawsuit. I never understand how this nonsense makes it to trial. More judges need to throw out cases like these.

How about, sorry we handcuffed you. Thank you, Im sorry I vandalized school property. Case over.
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The girl was doodling with an erasable marker.

The lawsuit is way too low, they should be suing for 10 million dollars. What happened to a trip to the prinicpal's office for infractions?

Arresting and cuffing a minor for what basically amounts to removable graffiti is beyond the pale.
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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.
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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."
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I would argue that arresting students who draw on their desks a deterrent is actually a useless policy, in that there is a great risk of the students labeling themselves as criminals or delinquents. If the students see themselves in this way, there is a greater chance that they will commit worse offenses than drawing on their desks, something I believe is a rather minor and common offense.

Besides, if the marker did not wash off, wouldn't it be more logical to have the girl pay for a new desk?
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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.
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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.
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She's doing it right. Oh, student chick, if you're reading this: You're really cute and I'd like to make love to you. <3

(I'm rather young and physically attractive, and slightly intellectual.)
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@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.
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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...
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Little Miss Gonzalez and her greedy mother Comacho are teaching children all the worst lessons. Graffiti is good. Suing for a greedy million is better. Great take less and less authority away from these helpless teachers who are trying to babysit Comacho's delinquent kid. If I am the Judge in this case I am going to throw this case out. If Greedy Momma Comacho makes one wrong remark in my Court I am going to throw her in jail. Why does the Mother and Daughter have two different last names? Does Mother Comacho receive Food Stamps benefits? There are alot of questions that need to be asked.
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I would offer to expunge this criminal offense perpretrated by the Juvenile Delinquent named Alexis Gonzalez in exchange for her mother withdrawing this bogus 1 million dollar lawsuit. If the mother Comacho denies this reasonable Settlement Offer then I would expect the Police Department and the School District to fight this lawsuit. I would look to find Mother Comacho in Contempt of Court at every opportunity I could find, if I were the Judge in this case. Mother Comacho is doing no favors to Society, her daughter or teachers or School Districts in Urban areas by bringing this frivolous suit. School Districts have a hard enough time babysitting delinquents like Alexis Gonzalez as it is...throwing "Gold Digger" Miriamso Comacho and her Juvenile delinquent daughter Alexis Gonzalez a Million bucks only incetivizes the delinquency problem and buys Alexis a Lexis.
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1 Million dollars is absurd. Alexis Gonzalez is apparently a juvenile delinquent in the eyes of the school and law enforcement. Law enforcement did their job without harming her in any way whatsoever. Sure, she's humiliated. Alexis Gonzalez has been convicted of defacing public property? It is now well within her rights to get the arrest and conviction erased via expungement so that it does not prevent her from getting a job? With a bogus lawsuit for 1 Million dollars it does not sound like she and her mother ever intend to work a hard day's work regardless of the outcome.
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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
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This is why my kids will no longer be attending public schools. They will not be bored, they will be challenged and respected, they will be held responsible for their own successes and failures and they will not be led away in handcuffs by armed police officers unless they commit a serious and/or violent offense.

The girl was wrong. The school was more wrong. And the police were almost as wrong as they could be in this situation unless she was verbally or physically abusive towards them.

They should be required to pay for her to attend the school of her choice until she graduates. She will most likely receive a better education and the whole of society will benefit.
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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.
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What a joke! The parent should be more concerned about teaching her child that vandalizing other people's property is not an acceptable behavior. She should also encourage her child to pay attention in school and not spend her time daydreaming and doodling. This woman should be apologetic to the school and be concerned with paying for the damaged property. The $1million dollar should be used to add resources to schools for kids who want an education and not for some greedy parent who doesn't know how to discipline her child. I would love to be on this civil court case, pick me pick me!
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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.
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There is no way that her and her greedy mother should get a settlement for her damaging School property, for all we know she could have been drawing signs of the devil or she could be drawing other offensive signs or words. She still did something that is a crime weather she likes it or not, the school has a right to do what they did. I was arrested at school when I was 12 years old for assault witch I didn't even do anything and I was treated like a criminal and could have sued but I didn't because it just wasn't worth the time, and eventually the charges were dropped after the judge clearly seen that it wasn't my fault, the student who claimed that I assaulted couldn't admit the truth in court and even his two younger brothers told the court that I did nothing wrong. So even though I was treated bad by police, I didn't bother doing anything about it because it just wasn't worth the BS.
So this Girl and her mother should be to blame for something she clearly shouldn't have done. And I can Guarantee that either the case gets thrown out of court and put on probation or she wins and then the School will sue them for destruction of school property as well as her being expelled, either way this Case is Greedy, they mother should be ashamed of herself, and the student has to grow up and realize that the world doesn't revolve around her, cause if she does win the lawsuit, more and more parents will take advantage of that and Greed will get the best of this country.
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