Treating kids like criminals

In Alternet there is a rather disturbing article about how kids are treated as criminals for even the smallest infractions

Arrested for Doodling on a Desk? "Zero Tolerance" at Schools Is Going Way Too Far

Not only are kids treated as criminals for doing stuff like doodling on desks, there have also been cases of invasion of privacy (strip-searching and spying on kids through webcams), and even a case of breaching a kid's civil rights (refusing to stand up and recite the pledge of allegiance).

Each of the case reported in the article are hopefully isolated cases, but given the fact that there are no statistics on the number of kids arrested, it's hard to say how widespread the problem is.

In New York, the criminalization of schoolkids seems to be particularly bad, as a NYCLU report (.pdf) explains. The problem seems to have become particularly bad after the New York Police took over the security of New York public schools back in 1998.

"Zero tolerance" laws were panic reactions to some very troubling incidents, but like all such reactions, they were not thought out properly, and do more harm than good. A school with harassment from security guards/police, body searches, and metal detectors is not a good learning environment. Instead, much more gentle, and targeted, measures should be used.

Last year, NYCLU released another report, this time about how one could provide safety for students, without criminalizing them: Safety with Dignity: Alternatives to the Over-Policing of Schools

Hopefully this report will convince the people in charge of school security to change their methods, and allow the kids to be kids, without fear of getting arrested for even minor infractions.

In case the report is not enough, perhaps the class action lawsuit by ACLU and NYCLU will help instead.

NYPD personnel assigned to New York City’s public schools have repeatedly violated students’ civil rights through wrongful arrests and the excessive use of force, according to a class action federal lawsuit filed today by the New York Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney LLP.

The landmark lawsuit challenges the conduct and behavior of police officers and school safety officers (SSOs) serving in the NYPD’s School Safety Division. It was filed on behalf of five middle school and high school students who were physically abused and wrongfully arrested at school by NYPD personnel. The plaintiffs seek system-wide reform in New York City’s middle schools and high schools.

Either way, the current system got to change.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Pigeons

Via Readerville I became aware of this New Yorker article

Birdnap

Last month, the National Audubon Society issued a paper documenting a decline in the populations of many common American birds, including bobwhites, whip-poor-wills, grackles, and grosbeaks. The study did not list the feral domestic pigeon as a species under siege, but apparently it is—at least, in certain local precincts. In Greenwich Village, residents are reporting a Columba livia domestica crime wave. Like the Upper East Side flock-nappings of a few years back, this recent spate of abductions has become a heated mystery, giving rise to the feeling, among residents, of having stepped into an episode of “Law & Order: Avian Victims Unit.”

Judith Monaco Callet was walking her neighbor’s dog one afternoon in April when she saw a man in an S.U.V. with tinted windows park on the west side of LaGuardia, near Bleecker. The man—Callet thinks he was Caucasian, and wearing a cap—got out of the S.U.V., crossed the street, and threw a big pile of birdseed onto the pavement. “Out of the corner of my eye,” Callet said the other day, “I saw a big black net, like a butterfly or fishing net. So I see it moving, and I’m thinking somebody’s lost a cat. The guy swooped the net up, closed it off, and there he went.” He made off with about fifteen pigeons.

A few feet away, in LaGuardia Corner Gardens, was Wilhelmine Hellmann, a retired electron microscopist, tending to her peach tree. “Wilhelmine shouted, ‘Get the license plate!’ ” Callet recalled. Callet managed to jot down the number before the S.U.V. sped away. She called the police and, later, the Villager, which noted the incident. “Someone is scooping up Village pigeons and no one knows why,” the paper warned.

Quite a strange story (if true), and it sounds like it is quite a puzzle. Nobody can figure out why anyone wants to catch these pigeons, though people have their pet theories, often based upon stereotypes

A few plots over from Hellmann, a gardener who gave his name as Jack was pruning his daylilies. A couple of years ago, he said, he’d seen something similar happen early on a Sunday morning. He put forth two explanations: either the pigeons were being eaten, perhaps in Chinatown, or they were being taken to shooting ranges in Pennsylvania. “You know something—just hit me right now?” he asked, his tone turning ominous. He looked across LaGuardia to the umbrellas of Señor Swanky’s. “Rich folk don’t like pigeons.” Jack pointed out a set of spiky metal apparatuses that, along with a parliament’s worth of owl decoys, had been installed on the window ledges of a nearby building. “It’s, like, follow the money.” Another gardener whispered, “Maybe it’s N.Y.U.!”

A racist and a conspiracy theorist. Nice, isn't it?

I wonder if we are going to ever hear what happens to those pigeons - somehow I don't think this case has the highest priority at the NYPD.

In the "don't they have better things to do" department

Via Readerville I became aware of this silly story.

Crime Most Fowl

A couple of birdbrained cops taught a lifelong educator a harsh lesson: It's a crime to feed sparrows on the street.

Yvette Bavier, 60, said she was innocently sprinkling bits of birdseed at West 125th Street and Hancock Place when two NYPD officers drove up and slapped her with a hefty ticket - for "littering."

Has the crime rate of New York fallen to such a low level that this is the level of crime the cops have to deal with to keep busy? And is it really a crime? The last paragraph of the article leads one to have some doubt.

Instead of ending the episode with the customary "have a nice day," Bavier said, the cops stunned her by advising that if she went to court, she could likely get her case dismissed.