New York Personal Injury News & NYC Legal Current Events

Lawsuit Against NYPD Over Excessive Force in New York City Schools

NYPD personnel assigned to New York City’s public schools have repeatedly violated students’ civil rights through wrongful arrests and the excessive use of force.

We have been representing clients and allegeing these very same claims for years.  And, now, the ACLU has started a class action, alleging the same claims that our firm has brought against the City. 

The landmark lawsuit challenges the conduct and behavior of police officers and school safety officers (SSOs) serving in the NYPD’s School Safety Division. It was filed on behalf of students who were physically abused and wrongfully arrested at school by NYPD personnel.

The lawsuit maintains that inadequately trained and poorly supervised police personnel engage in aggressive behavior toward students when no criminal activity is taking place and when there is no threat to health and safety. The police confront and arrest students over minor disciplinary infractions such as talking back, being late for class or having a cell phone in school. The lawsuit documents numerous incidents in which students engaged in non-criminal conduct were handcuffed, arrested and physically assaulted by police personnel at school.

In one case that we are pursuing, an officer who was more than 6 feet tall and, by some estimates, weighed in excess of 300 pounds, tackled and repeatedly punched our client, who was only 5'4" and about 150 pounds.  Why? We still don't know.  We have learned, however, that the defendant police officer resigned from his posistion under pressure from his superiors.  He apparently had been involved in several excessive false alteracations before he abused our client.     

Since the NYPD took control of public school safety in New York City in 1998, more than 5,000 SSOs, civilian NYPD employees assigned to the schools, and nearly 200 armed police officers have been assigned to the city’s public schools. This massive presence makes the NYPD’s School Safety Division the nation’s fifth largest police force – larger than the police forces in Washington D.C., Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, Dallas, Phoenix, San Francisco, San Diego or Las Vegas. The number of police personnel assigned to patrol New York City public schools has grown by 73 percent since the transfer of school safety to the NYPD, even though school crime was declining prior to the 1998 transfer and even though student enrollment is at its lowest point in more than a decade.

SSOs wear NYPD uniforms and possess the authority to stop, frisk, question, search and arrest students. While NYPD police officers must complete a six-month training course before being deployed, SSOs receive only 14 weeks of training before being assigned to schools. School administrators have no supervisory authority over the SSOs who patrol their schools.

From 2002 to June 2007, the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau received 2,670 complaints against members of NYPD’s School Safety Division – about 500 complaints annually – even though no effective or publicized mechanism exists for lodging complaints against school safety officers. Families that have lodged complaints against SSOs have reported that, in response, the NYPD simply transfers those SSOs to different public schools. Additionally, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates allegations of police misconduct, has reported that the NYPD receives about 1,200 complaints a year about SSOs.

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