Alexa Gonzalez, the 12-year-old Queens student who was arrested and handcuffed for doodling on a school desk in February, plans to sue the city for $1 million.
If there’s any justice in the world, she’ll win the case. What the school and the police did was an outrage to common sense and decency, and an abuse of authority that almost defies description. That not one single adult in the chain of command said, “Hey, wait, we can’t arrest a junior high student for writing on a desk,” says a lot about the power of group-think and the mindlessness of power.
From the New York Daily News:
Victim of power
A lawyer for Alexa Gonzalez and her mother officially notified the city that they’ll seek $1 million in damages for the alarming incident inside Junior High School 190 in Queens.
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.
Using an erasable lime-green marker, Alexa scribbled the message “I love my friends Abby and Faith.”
Oh, wow, it must have been some kind of terrorist code language.
The poor girl was arrested, handcuffed and marched out of the school to the local police station, where she was detained for hours. Get a load of this, as reported on AOL.com:
Gonzalez describes the ordeal as traumatizing and excessive, saying that after her Spanish teacher caught her doodling on her desk with erasable green marker, she was “physically dragged by a teacher and an assistant principal” to the dean’s office, where school safety officials searched her by placing “their hands inside the rear and front pockets of her jeans.” Police were then summoned to arrest her.
Searched her? For what? Another dangerous marker?
The legal papers filed by Rosenthal said Comacho was not permitted to accompany her daughter to the precinct and was instead told to go home and wait for a call. The documents also said that Gonzalez was detained in “an enclosed room” at the precinct and handcuffed to a pole for more than two hours.
Vile. Beyond. Belief.
Police spokesman Paul Browne told the Daily News that officers should have used better judgment after being called by the school.
Ya think? The cops should have said, “Fuck you, we’re not doing anything. Give the kid detention.” But too many cops like nothing better than to exercise power, the more arbitrary the better.
The kicker is that Alexa had to go to family court, where she was ordered to write a book report (about what? her booking?) and “an essay about what she learned from the experience,” according to AOL.com.
I have a pretty good idea what she learned: That some adults are dumb shits and that power corrupts absolutely — and imbecilicly.
