Just great, guys. You find the police guilty based on the report of a woman directly involved in the incident.
I certainly hope I never have any of you on my jury.
This is the caliber of the NYPD:
(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/966431/thumbs/o-WILSON-REYES-facebook.jpg) (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/boy-cuffed-held-kid-money-article-1.1250928)
Some snippets from the various stories:
Most kids get a timeout or a spanking for bad behavior, but a 7-year-old Bronx boy, Wilson Reyes, was arrested and handcuffed to a police precinct wall for hours on a robbery rap, police sources said. Frances Mendez, the mother of the pint-sized “perp,” is threatening to sue the NYPD for $250 million — saying cops treated her son like a hardened criminal after he allegedly punched a 9-year-old boy in the face and took $5 from him, her lawyer and a police source said Tuesday.
Police arrested the child in his third-grade classroom at Public School 114 on Cromwell Ave., detained him at the school for four hours and then kept him in custody at the 44th Precinct for six hours after the December incident, the woman’s lawyer said in a statement Monday. He couldn’t be reached for further comment Tuesday.
* * *
“If (this) 7-year-old and his mother lived on 64th and Park and he attended a $35,000-a-year private school, do you think (he) would have been arrested, handcuffed to a wall and denied access to his mother and legal counsel for 10 hours?”
But an NYPD spokeswoman said Tuesday the boy was held for just four hours and 40 minutes. “The attorney is fabricating the amount of time the child was in custody,” Inspector Kim Royster said. Royster refused to comment further, citing the ages of the kids.
Yankowitz said cops intimidated, verbally abused and interrogated the child and said the boy was humiliated by officers shouting “thief” and threatening to put him away “with the big boys.”
* * *
But the first police source insisted that cops followed the rules when they arrested the accused bully.
“Everything was done properly,” the cop source said. “He was arrested for a robbery. He was taken to the precinct and put in the juvenile room. His parent was allowed to see him.”
Babying the boy wasn’t an option, the second police source added.
“He had to be handcuffed — he was a prisoner. If we didn’t handcuff him and he ran out the front door, then we would have had an escaped prisoner on our hands.”
The source said charges could not have been filed against a child 6 and under, but kids 7 to 17 can be charged as juveniles.
* * *
source: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/boy-cuffed-held-kid-money-article-1.1250928
From the then NYC Public Advocate, now Mayor-Elect De Blasio:
“Seven-year-olds don’t belong in handcuffs. As a parent, I wouldn’t stand for this in one of my kids’ schools. Our school system's overreliance on the NYPD as a disciplinary tool traumatizes our young people, sows distrust in our communities and drains vital City resources away from responding to genuine crimes. This has to stop.”
A sane, rational person does not arrest a seven year-old kid for robbery,handcuff him, hold him for hours - and interrogate him - while not permitting his family to see him (yes, they eventually let them see him, but not after stalling), and a sane, rational person most definitely does not chain said seven year-old to a railing in the precinct house like a dog.
And lest you chime in that, well, after all these were just a few bad apples in a barrel otherwise overflowing with gee-whiz goodie two shoes, let's revisit this quote, from the police spokesperson no less:
“Everything was done properly,”
In other words, this is the way the NYPD expects cops to deal with seven year olds. This is standard operating behaviour; it's what every cop is trained to do.
I'm sorry, you may find this acceptable or defensible; I find it nauseating; the sort of disgusting, typical, behaviour the NYPD routinely engages in.
There's no need to prejudge the NYPD, they've damned themselves already. They disgust me.