Student who was arrested for doodling on school desk sues city for excessive force

The 12-year-old schoolgirl handcuffed and arrested in February for doodling on her desk plans to sue the city.
A lawyer for Alexa Gonzalez and her mother officially notified the city that they'll seek $1 million in damages for the alarming incident inside Junior High School 190 in Queens.
The legal papers describe Alexa's ordeal as an excessive use of force and a violation of her rights. "We want to stop this from happening to other young children in the future," said the family's lawyer, Joseph Rosenthal.
Using an erasable lime-green marker, Alexa scribbled the message "I love my friends Abby and Faith," Alexa's mom, Moraima Camacho, told the Daily News in February. "The whole situation has been a nightmare."
The notice filed against the city education department and the NYPD reveals Alexa was subjected to harsh treatment even before her arrest.
She was "physically dragged by a teacher and an assistant principal" to the dean's office, the legal papers claim.
School safety officers searched her by placing "their hands inside the rear and front pockets of her jeans."

Despite the fact that officers "knew, or should have known that it was a soluable, erasable marker," police officers were summoned to arrest her, the papers note.
Alexa was perp-walked out of the school in front of her classmates with her hands locked in metal handcuffs behind her back.
Alexa's mother pleaded with the officers to accompany her daughter to the police precinct, but Camacho was told to go home and wait for a call.
Officers placed Alexa in "an enclosed room" at the precinct and handcuffed her to a pole for more than two hours, the papers note.
City lawyers declined to comment, but city officials acknowledged in February the arrest was a mistake.
Alexa is not the first kid to seek justice for excessive force. The family of Chelsea Fraser, then 13, sued the city too after she was arrested for writing "okay" on her desk at Brooklyn's Intermediate School 201.
After then-5-year-old Dennis Rivera was handcuffed for throwing a fit in kindergarten, his family sued for $15 million in damages.
Their lawsuit is ongoing, as is a class-action lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union in January on behalf of city middle- and high-school students.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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