New York Police Department (NYPD) lawyers had better come up with good reasons to support this case; otherwise they may have to cough out $250 million as damages for mistreating a third-grade pupil accused of stealing $5 from another student.
According to the report, 7 year-old Wilson Reyes was arrested and handcuffed for four hours before being hauled off to the 44th Precinct station house for another six hours of interrogation and verbal abuse.
Distraught mom Frances Mendez took this photograph of her son when she was finally able to see him at the local police precinct
‘Reyes was handcuffed and verbally, physically and emotionally abused, intimidated, humiliated, embarrassed and defamed,’ the documents say.
The lawsuit also claims that Reyes was teased by officers shouting ‘thief’ and threatening to put him away ‘with the big boys.’ He was also charged with robbery.
Distraught mom Frances Mendez claims that when she first went to the precinct, she was told she couldn’t see her son.
When eventually she was allowed in, she found her son to be visibly upset and with his left wrist cuffed to the wall.
‘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,’ Frances Mendez told The New York Post.
The robbery charges against the lad were dropped by the city’s Law Department on Dec. 26. The legal papers say another classmate later admitted the theft.
Reyes’ attorney Jack Yankowitz says that the arrest severely scarred the little boy, who ‘continues to suffer from multiple body injuries, pain and distress, emotional and psychological injury and damage.’
However, police spokesperson has described the claims in the lawsuit as ‘grossly untrue’ and denies that the child was held for six hours in the precinct.
They insist that Wilson was treated like any other young suspect in a juvenile arrest and that they even let him have pizza.
This story, if it’s all completely true, is just disgusting. What about the school authorities? Who called the police over $5? Even if the child DID steal the money and you wanted to teach him a lesson, this is not the way to do it. For starters? How about NYPD and all the other major cities with buttloads of crime start focusing on the violent criminals? Nah, can’t do that, that’s too dangerous, it’s easier to pick on defenseless folks, like this kid or how about the recent beating of a man who was staying at a Yeshiva in Crown Heights? Or all the damned parking tickets given out? (yeah, that’s a long shot, but it’s one of my pet peeves). I was a single mom with two boys in NYC, they turned out pretty good because I disciplined them, I didn’t allow them to behave badly and get away with it. But if a cop had done this to my child, I would have been handcuffed right along with him, for raising hell with the school and with the asinine “law enforcers”…
This is sheer madness,i cant but pitying that young innocent looking boy,even if he had taken the money,it doesnt worth this humiliation.it is really unfair on dt poor boy,and now dt the truth is out ,ow do they want the boy to feel, can it erase all the inhuman treatment meted on the boy.Yes they must be made to pay through their nose.
Disgusting behavior! These are people in authority to uphold the law. Poor boy, they know who they can take the p*** out of don’t they!