School safety officers treated Brooklyn 9-year-old 'like a criminal' by handcuffing him, mom says

BY Ben Chapman
New York Daily News
May. 15, 2010

Nine-year-old Jaheim Williams is no angel -- but he still doesn't deserve to be treated like a prisoner, his mother charges.

After the 70-pound third-grader got into a fight at Public School 178 in Brownsville last week, ,a school safety officer put Jaheim in handcuffs for two hours, called the cops and had him transported to a nearby hospital, his mother said.

"They treated my little son like a criminal," said Ivory Williams, 28. "All kids fight. You can't manhandle them like this."

While education officials say the boy was treated this way because he posed a "threat," civil liberties advocates charged it was the latest case of a school incident being turned into a criminal matter.

Williams said Jaheim got into a scuffle with another boy at lunch last Wednesday and was handcuffed by the school safety officer who broke up the fight.

School officials summoned Jaheim's mother to calm him down - and she was shocked to find her son handcuffed in the parent coordinator's office when she arrived.

"He was crying and having an asthma attack," she said. "He wasn't going to hurt anyone."

Williams asked to have the cuffs removed, but instead two cops from the 73rd Precinct escorted the shackled boy and his mother to Brookdale University Hospital, where he was evaluated and released.

Since then, he has been suspended. The boy and his mother will appear at a hearing Friday.

"I don't ever want to go back to that school," said Jaheim. "They made me feel like a bad person."

Department of Education spokesperson Margie Feinberg said the boy was restrained because "schools safety judged him to be a threat to himself and others."

She insisted Jaheim was restrained in the handcuffs for no more than 20 minutes at the school. Ivory Williams, though, said her son remained handcuffed by cops on the way to and at the hospital.

Jaheim has been suspended for fighting at school eight times, his mother said, but he has never been arrested before.

"This is not the first example of the transformation of a school matter into a police arrest," said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman.

Jaheim is the latest in a series of city students who have been cuffed for seemingly minor infractions, she said.

Earlier this year, Alexa Gonzalez, 12, was handcuffed and arrested at her Queens school for doodling on her desk. In 2008, a Queens kindergartner was cuffed after throwing a fit in class. And in 2007, a 13-year-old Brooklyn girl was arrested, also for writing on her desk.

The NYCLU filed a class action lawsuit against the city in January for using "excessive force" in middle school and high schools.

The city receives over 500 complaints a year against the 5,200 safety officers that police city schools, according to the NYCLU.

The NYPD didn't return calls for comment.