"(April 3) -- When 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez was caught doodling on her desk at Junior High School 190 in Queens, New York, she expected detention and an afternoon on desk-cleaning duty. Instead, she was arrested, led out of her school in handcuffs and detained at a local police precinct for hours, she said.What did she write? It must have been something sinister right? Wrong.
Two months after the incident, Gonzalez and her mother, Maraima Comacho, are suing the New York City Education Department and the New York Police Department for $1 million in damages, claiming excessive use of force and violation of the girl's rights in the ordeal, which Comacho has called a "nightmare."
"We want to stop this from happening to other young children in the future," the family's lawyer, Joseph Rosenthal, told the New York Daily News.
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.
Gonzalez told the Daily News she broke down as she was led out of her school in handcuffs.
"I started crying, like, a lot," said said. "I made two little doodles. ... It could be easily erased. To put handcuffs on me is unnecessary."
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."
"What were the doodled words that led to her arrest? 'I love my friends Abby and Faith,' Gonzalez said she wrote, adding 'Lex was here. 2/1/10' and a smiley face."
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This is unacceptable on so many levels. I hope she wins her case.
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