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13-Year-Old Arrested For Defacing School Desk
By
Jen Chung
Published Apr 6, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Apr 6, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Promoting a civil public school environment is important, but we had no idea that the price you paid for writing on a desk could be so severe. A 13-year-old girl was handcuffed and arrested by the police for writing "okay" on a desk at her Dyker Heights school. WCBS 2 spoke to the Chelsea Fraser and her outraged mother Diana Silva, who said, "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?" Yeah, what happened to detention?
Fraser was 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...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."
"All the kids were ... watching these three boys and my daughter being marched out with four -- they had four police officers -- walking them out, handcuffed," Silva said. "She goes to me, 'Mommy, these hurt!'"
The students were taken to the 68th Precinct station house where Silva says they were separated for three hours. "MY child is 13-years-old -- doesn't it stand that I'm supposed to be present for any questioning?" Silva said. "I'm watching my daughter, she's handcuffed to the pole. I ask the officer has she been there the entire time? She says, 'Yes.'"
Silva suggests that her daughter's punishment could have been cleaning the desk on a Saturday, in-house suspension, and a formal apology instead of going to the pokey. What do you think?
And a 14-year-old and 15-year-old were arrested for graffiti incidents in Staten Island's North Shore; they've tagged a church, stores, mailboxes, telephone posts, and more.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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