The Strip-Search Room: students strip-searched for cell phones, handcuffed

[The Straight Story]

The Strip-Search Room
Students manhandled by police in Bloomberg's schools have no place to complain

When our mayor and schools chancellor accept awards from national education organizations for regenerating New York City's schools, they somehow neglect to mention a certain school safety issue: There is a room, located in the dean's office at Hillcrest High School in Queens, that students call "the strip-search room," which is where School Safety Agents have manhandled students.

Attorney Victoria Renta Irwin, who is representing one of these students, 16-year-old Rohan Morgan, has filed a personal injury claim against the City of New York, saying that Morgan was handcuffed, dragged into that dreaded room on June 24 by School Safety Agents, and beaten. His crime: He brought his cell phone to summer school.

During previous sessions in the strip-search room, Irwin says, her client "suffered various injuries, including bruises, a lacerated finger, and a knee injury requiring surgery. . . . The mental, emotional, and physical trauma endured by Rohan is all the more troubling because it was inflicted by adults assigned to protect him. These incidents have robbed him of his dignity and have made going to school a terrifying experience for him."

That's true not just for Morgan, says 17-year-old Hillcrest senior, Deidra Jones: "They take you in the back room, and they strip-search you just to get your phone."

As other battered Hillcrest students come to court, much of the evidence on which the lawsuits are based will come from the investigations and student interviews conducted by Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) in Jackson Heights, which describes itself as "a community-based social-justice organization of low-income South Asian immigrants, and immigrants facing deportation."

For the past year, DRUM parents, students, and youth leaders have been organizing at Hillcrest while also calling again and again for the City Council to pass the Student Safety Act, which, as I've often reported, will finally bring accountability to these official SSA bullies; their ultimate boss (Ray Kelly); supine Schools Chancellor Joel Klein; and, of course, the schools' Commander in Chief Michael Bloomberg, who has not said a single word on how the students' fear of the police—not only at Hillcrest High—has been instilled under his watch.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-01-07/columns/the-strip-search-room/

[philosophie_en_rose]

1. Sick.

How important is it to remove the phones and where exactly do they think kids are hiding them? If a kid brings a phone or an iPod to school, what does it matter unless it's a disruption - at which point demand the kid turn it over or send her or him home.

[reggie the dog]

7. schools in the USA still think that only drug dealers have cell phones

In France kids can have them at school but are not allowed to use them in classrooms.

[Greyhound]

9. I remember when the geniuses that run California had all the public phones

incoming calls disabled, again in the name of their Holy War on drug dealers (like drug dealers can't afford pagers and cell phones).

More evidence that stupidity is not limited to one political party.

[PDJane]

2. Doesn't sound like a free country to me............

[TankLV]

3. I doubt they "strip" search them...cell phones do NOT belong in the classroom. Period.

Sorry, but I've seen some of these "upstanding young students" and they are NOT "innocent" children but thugs who try to deliberatly distrupt and disturb...

If they refuse to turn off or offer up the phones till after class is done, then they SHOULD be taken off them...PERIOD.

[uppityperson]

4. Yeah, sounds like all they do is beat them there, with clothes on.

Should be called the "interrogation room" or "getting hit by School Safety Agents room" or some such.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Careful. Pretty soon someone will suggest you are a horrible teacher

and need to be fired. :)

[Generic Other]

16. I have never had a student do more than turn the thing off if it rang

or go out in the hall if it was an emergency call. Disrupted us for half a second. Big deal. My phone has gone off once or twice as well. Life in the 21st century.

I don't much want to confiscate other people's property for such trivial offenses. The disruption my response would cause is far greater than the crime warrants in my opinion.

[madmom]

5. when my daughter was in school around the time of the Columbine incident, I

made sure she took her phone to school, but keep it turned off. How are they supposed to get help if needed and there are SO many times things like this has happened. I make sure she has her phone everywhere she goes.

[MadMaddie]

6. I was thinking the same thing!

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. Do schools not have phones?

I let my students use the phone anytime they ask.

[madmom]

14. In an emergency situation, one cannot always run to where there is a phone.

[Ghost in the Machine]

15. Shame on you for trying to make sense!!!

:hi:

People trapped in classrooms, hiding under desks... what's wrong with them? Why can't the little chickenshits run to the office and use a phone?? :sarcasm:

[CreekDog]

8. This is the American Way...once we decide what to do, we do it

...even if doing it causes more harm.

so once we decide cell phones are banned, that then means that it is okay to beat and strip search a child to remove it from her. :crazy:

The American way, like I said.

[surrealAmerican]

12. I've got a radical new idea.

How about we treat the students as if they were human beings. Sounds crazy, but it just might work.

[AwakeAtLast]

13. If we do that, they'll expect to be treated that way in their job.

;)

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. More police-state madness. Madness, madness, madness!

Could you honestly imagine it happening in Europe. In Russia under the Stalin? Crazy.

So totally out of proportion. You've got a rabid national gun culture, and the authorities are terrified of schoolkids with cellphones!