A 7 year old boy’s family has threatened to sue NYC to the tune of $250 million after their 7 year old son was arrested, handcuffed and kept in custody for 10 hours . The boy’s arrest came after a fight broke out amongst Bronx school children after $50 000 $5 went missing.
Notes gothamist: When Wilson Reyes’ mother Frances Mendez arrived at the 44th Precinct, she was shocked to see her son handcuffed to the wall.
Mendez said, “My son was crying, ‘Mommy, it wasn’t me! Mommy, it wasn’t me!’ I never imagined the cops could do that to a child. We’re traumatized… Imagine how I felt seeing my son in handcuffs! It was horrible. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
The nypost goes on to report the altercation occurred when the money, which was supposed to be used for a school trip that never happened, had fallen on the ground in front of Wilson and two other boys, and one of them scooped it up. Wilson was falsely accused of taking it, and he scuffled with one of the kids.
Officers showed up at PS X114 on Dec. 4 at about 10:20 a.m., and handcuffed and held Wilson in a room there for four hours. They then hauled him off to the 44th Precinct station house for another six hours of interrogation and verbal abuse, according to a $250 million claim against the city and the NYPD.
Eventually another child submitted to stealing the money but that is little comfort for Menendez who argues cops refused to let her see her son.
Offers family lawyer Jack Yanowitz: “It’s unfathomable, what the police did. The whole thing sounds so stupid. They were interrogating him like he was a hardened criminal.”
And how has NY Police department reacted to the snafus?
NYPD spokeswoman Kim Royster told the Daily News, “The attorney is fabricating the amount of time the child was in custody.” She insists Wilson was only held for four hours and 40 minutes.”
But the mess gets deeper and nastier:
The cop source close to the incident said the 7-year-old had been bullying the victim for some time, prompting the victim’s mom to call for a meeting with teachers and the suspect’s mom. “This kid is no angel, even though he may look like it,” the source said. “We made the arrest based on the complainant aggressively complaining about what the defendant did to him. This wasn’t something where one kid runs off with another kid’s basketball. This 7-year-old attacked someone and took his money. There’s a little more to this story than it appears.”
Reflects one unidentified cop: “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.” Another source argues that “If we didn’t handcuff him and he ran out the front door, then we would have had an escaped prisoner on our hands.”
Aren’t you glad the NY Police department is doing a fine job of making sure all these hardened juveniles learn their lessons, that way they will never ever end up growing to become hardened adult offenders….
Of course this author wonders how this all would have all went down had the fight broken out not at some school in the Bronx but in some cushy private school enclave on the Upper East side….
That’s why so many kids want to give fudge to the po-leece.
It is never justified to handcuff a 7 year old. SHAME ON THEM
So the article states $50,000 $5 went missing. Which is it?