Parents of a 7-year-old Bronx, New York boy are outraged after learning that police officers handcuffed and interrogated their son after he was accused of stealing $5 from another student.
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Frances Mendez is now suing the police for $250 million, claiming they overreacted and treated her son like a hardened criminal.
The incident began when Wilson Reyes was sent to the principal’s office for allegedly taking money from a student in the school. Officers were called and Reyes was arrested at Public School 114, where they kept him handcuffed in a room for four hours.
Later he was taken to the 44th Precinct station for another six hours of interrogation and verbal abuse, according to the claim against the city and NYPD.
“Reyes was handcuffed and verbally, physically and emotionally abused, intimidated, humiliated, embarrassed and defamed,” the documents say.
The lawsuit also claims that the boy was teased by officers shouting “thief” and threatening to put him away “with the big boys.” He was eventually charged with robbery.
His mother claims that when she went to the precinct to pick her son up, they wouldn’t let her see him at first. When she finally went inside, she found her son 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.
But there are two…or three sides to every story.
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The child who is accusing Wilson of stealing his money also said that the boy is a bully.
“Wilson was the worst bully,” Seth Acevedo told the Daily News. “He would call me names. He would punch and kick me. I wish they never took the cuffs off of him.”
The robbery charges were eventually dropped. A police spokesperson has described the claims in the lawsuit as “grossly untrue” and deny that the child was held for six hours in the precinct.
They even gave him pizza…according to the spokesperson.
Well! If the allegations are true, do you think the police were a little harsh? Or was little Wilson’s lesson appropriate?
SOURCE: Daily Mail
