13 Year Old Handcuffed, Arrested For Writing On School Desk

[matcom]

<snip>

(CBS) NEW YORK In this day and age where young students are frequently charged for serious school offenses such as possessing weapons, dealing drugs, or assaulting other students on school property, one Brooklyn teen's arrest may come as a surprise. A 13-year-old girl was handcuffed and placed under arrest in front of her classmates in Dyker Heights after she wrote "Okay" on her desk.

The "suspect," Chelsea Fraser, says she's sorry for scribbling the word on her desk, but both she and her mother are shocked at the punishment.

"I'm appalled, because here we have rapists, murderers, and you're taking a 13-year-old kid? Wasting valuable manpower to arrest a child who wrote on a desk?" Fraser's mother Diana Silva told CBS 2.

Police confirm that that's exactly what's written on her arrest record and for the crime, she's been charged with criminal mischief and the making of graffiti. Fraser says the day she marked her desk, she was wrongly grouped together with troublemakers who had plastered stickers all over the classroom.

Fraser was arrested at the Dyker Heights Intermediate School on March 30 along with three other male students. She says she was made to empty her pockets and take off her belt. Then she was handcuffed and led out of the school in front of her classmates and placed in the back of a police car.

"It was really embarrassing because some of the kids, they talk, and they're going to label me as a bad kid. But I'm really not," Fraser said. "I didn't know writing 'Okay' would get me arrested."

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_095170448.html

[realisticphish]

1. writing "okay"

yeah, it's against the rules, but in my high school, they would just make you clean it off, not send you to the gulag.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Good! I hope they start executing the kids who didn't bring enough candy to share with everyone, too

It's time to stop coddling criminals - that is, children - and teach them some serious lessons about life and how to behave.

Schools are prisons, not places to "learn".

In my day...

[Lady Freedom]

3. OH COME ON!!!!

Stickers and writing on desks is not something to get so stupid over!!! Want to punishment for that? Make the guys stay after school and take each and every sticker down. Make them stay after school for as many days as it takes. as for the writing on the desk, just make her clean it. The educational system is going over the edge with a lot of this. Save the cops for the big stuff like drugs, guns, and physical violence!

[MissMillie]

4. remember when you got a detention for this stuff?

or even a written warning for the first offense?

and then a detention?

and then maybe a one-day in-house detention--washing desks?

[Left Is Write]

5. Unbelievable.

This is the biggest :wtf: moment I've had in weeks.

If they arrested every kid who ever wrote on a desk when I was in school, there'd have been about five students left.

[Threedifferentones]

6. Well it's about goddamn time

We've already lost so many fine desks, we have to start setting an example.

[Hugin]

7. Okay.

I'm waiting...

[astral]

8. I recall having heard alot of other weird stuff

Just from the top of my head from memory (I should look up links, but not tonite)
-- a gal I forget her age but somewhere between 8 and 12 got in trouble with the school WEAPONS laws when she brought a cake to school, to share for some purpose, and a box of plastic silverware, you know with the forks / spoons / ***GASP!*** KNIVES in it. She got arrested, she got a weapons charge, she lost all her credits for the year and had to go to summer school.

-- a kindergartner got arrested and hauled away by the police for throwing a TANTRUM in class. Something to do with rules about the teachers not being able to physically do anything for fear of assault / molestation charges, or something.

-- the (9?) year old who got interrogated by the FBI for drawing a picture of his father carrying a machine gun or something. It was art! Done in school for art!

That's all that I can remember off the top of my head but that's not all the stories there are. Oh, and do you remember the SWAT team coming into the school and terrorizing students with drug dogs and locker searches and actually POINTING their guns at the kids and stuff? That one I'll look up if nobody remembers it or believes me.

Something has changed, gotten totally, weirdly, TWISTED around in the so-called sense of right vs. wrong in the school system. It's the same kind of strange stuff happening to adults in the post-Patriot Act USA, but to do this to kids is -- a CRIME. We've got to wake up and take back control of our country somehow.

[femmocrat]

9. I just wonder if there is more to this story....

It seems pretty far-fetched. Maybe the girl became unmanageable???

Or maybe the principal just wanted to make an example of these students to dissuade others from such behavior. If so, the punishment definitely does not fit the crime, IMO.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

10. At least it was a real cop, right Mat?

LOL

[petronius]

11. She wasn't punished for writing on the desk

She was punished for writing something so stupid and pointless on the desk. Everyone knows that the only worthwhile things to write/carve on a desk are "Pink Floyd" and "Metallica." Kids these days...sheesh!

[alphafemale]

12. Wait a minute. Even in the hallowed halls of the senate...

aren't the desk covered with 200 yr old graffiti?

[Danger Mouse]

13. Paranoia over school violence has led to ridiculous behavior by school officials.

It's absurd, but kids can't be kids anymore. The police state is already here, but it's the kids that are suffering through it. Again and again, you hear more and more stories about kids being arrested and charged for the most asinine things imaginable. Imagine if adults were being treated the same way? Bush has wet dreams about being able to get away with shit like that.
This case will be laughed out of court by any judge that isn't Torquemada, and this girl can look forward to suing the shit out of the school administration.
Fucking clueless assholes.

[SacredCow]

14. Asinine with a capital ASS.....

Much like charging kindergarteners with sexual harrassment...

[Deep13]

15. Well, at least he's writing.

:shrug:

They need to be taught young to tolerate living in a totalitarian society.

[mvd]

16. Geez

This truly is a bizarro world we are living in. Jan. 2009 can't come quickly enough!