Pin-head school guards
Cuff teen for device holding glasses together
STUDENTS AND parents rallied outside a Brooklyn school Friday, outraged that a high schooler was handcuffed and threatened with arrest by NYPD safety agents who objected to a pin holding his glasses together.
They were joined by Mayor de Blasio’s son, Dante, who was among a group of Brooklyn Tech students protesting outside Park Slope Collegiate, witnesses said.
The youth with the glasses, a 19-year-old senior identified by fellow students as Noah, had been attending Collegiate for weeks with the pin in his spectacles, according to a letter from the school PTA. But on Thursday, school safety agents stopped him and confiscated the gold pin.
“Security felt that the little pin posed a threat to school safety,” according to a letter to parents from the PTA.
Student Britney Brazela, 15, a 10th-grader who lives in Canarsie, Brooklyn, witnessed what happened next.
“When (Noah) reached for his glasses, the safety agents must have thought he was reaching for a weapon,” she said.
“Three or four cops jumped on him. They pushed him into a wall and then onto the floor. While he was going down, his elbow accidentally hit one of them in the face."
A school safety agent was struck in the eye, according to a police spokesman.
“Noah is a very quiet kid — I never saw him cause any trouble,” Britney said. “I can’t believe that happened. It was scary.”
The PTA letter’s description of the encounter matches Britney’s.
“They brought him to the ground, pinned him down, and handcuffed him,” the letter says. “He reports that he was confused and upset.”
A police source said Noah was confrontational, did not follow a school safety agent’s directions, and began to struggle with the agent. The source added that police determined Noah’s blow to the safety agent’s eye was accidental.
After Noah was given a summons for disorderly conduct, the school’s principal, Jill Bloomberg, had him come to her office to file a report on what happened. “While our student was writing, NYPD officers arrived on our floor, forcefully entered Principal Bloomberg’s office, and handcuffed our student again,” the PTA letter says. “He was dragged out, placed under arrest, and held in a room by NYPD officers without his parents or any of our staff present.”
After much back and forth between school administrators and police, cops didn’t go forward with the arrest, according to the PTA. Noah still has to answer to the summons in Youth Court.
“Things went too far,” said a teacher at the school who declined to give his name. “A student was expecting to learn but instead he got handcuffed.”
The Internal Affairs Bureau and the Civilian Complaint Review Board are investigating the incident, police said.
Dozens of students and parents rallied Friday outside Park Slope Collegiate, which shares the former John Jay High School building on Seventh Ave. with four other small schools.
“We are upset about what happened,” said Ania Murray, 14, a ninth-grader from Crown Heights. “A pin is not a weapon.”
“Dante de Blasio came to the demonstration to show his support,” she added. “He's trying to set a good example for kids like us to do the right thing.”