Harassed in the Classroom-NYPD Thugs in NYC

By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Tuesday 03 July 2007

Michael Soguero was a first-rate principal at Bronx Guild High School. He loved his job, and he loved teaching in New York. He has not blamed the New York City Police Department for his departure to a school in Estes Park, Colo. Nevertheless, the facts are the facts.

Back on Feb. 3, 2005, a student came running into Mr. Soguero's office at Bronx Guild to say that a police officer was in a classroom. "I jumped up and ran to the classroom," Mr. Soguero told me in an interview last week. "I found this officer, Gonzalez, exchanging words with a female student.

"Everyone is sitting down except for the teacher and these two. The girl was saying, 'What did I do? What are you talking to me about?' "

What was about to unfold was another episode of bizarrely excessive police activity inside a New York City public school.

The girl, who was 16, had apparently uttered a curse word in a hallway. While that is undoubtedly inappropriate behavior, it is hardly a criminal offense. The police officer, Juan Gonzalez, who was part of a security task force assigned to the school, had followed the girl into the classroom.

Mr. Soguero quieted things down and asked the officer to leave the room, which he did. "I got the girl to sit down and I told her I would talk to her later to address this," Mr. Soguero said. He thought the crisis was over.

The principal was shocked when he walked out of the classroom. Officer Gonzalez was waiting and made it clear that he wanted the girl arrested.

"He told me," said Mr. Soguero in the interview, "that I had two minutes to 'bring her out here.' I said, 'I'm not bringing her out here.' "

The angry officer, according to Mr. Soguero, barged past him and into the classroom. "I followed him," said Mr. Soguero, "and he's pushing desks aside, walking through students to get at her, disrupting everything. She's sitting in a chair. He grabs her arm, her left arm with his right hand, and he's reaching back to grab his cuffs. At that point I walked around him and physically stood in between the two of them."

This sort of thing, the police wildly overreacting to behavior by schoolkids that is not criminal, happens much more often than most New Yorkers realize. Officer Gonzalez behaved as if he were rounding up the James gang. He arrested the girl. He arrested Mr. Soguero. And he arrested a school aide who had tried to come to the principal's defense.

Mr. Soguero was handcuffed in full view of everyone - students, teachers, staff - and marched out of the school. Later the police paraded him in front of news photographers in a humiliating "perp walk."

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly supported Officer Gonzalez, telling reporters at the time, "The principal was simply wrong."

But that was not the case. There was no evidence that a crime had been committed, and the charges were later dropped. Mr. Soguero, who was suspended by school authorities at the time of his arrest, was allowed to resume the post of principal.

Now, more than two years after the incident, I learned from the Police Department that Mr. Gonzalez is indeed a problem officer, despite the initial knee-jerk support he received from the commissioner, from the Bronx district attorney, Robert Johnson, and from others in the criminal justice system.

In response to a query last week, Commissioner Kelly's office disclosed that Officer Gonzalez is currently on "modified assignment." His gun and badge have been taken away. But the department declined yesterday to disclose further details.

The Soguero incident is among many outlined in a report from the New York Civil Liberties Union titled "Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools." Students, teachers and principals who have done nothing wrong are frequently harassed, abused and in some cases arrested and jailed by cops who are supposed to be on the lookout for criminal activity.

It's common for police officers to belittle and curse at students. And many students have complained about "pat-downs" and intrusive searches by the police.

This is part of what appears to be a widespread campaign of police harassment against young people in New York, especially young people who are black or Latino.

If Rudy Giuliani were mayor, much of the city would be in an uproar over this kind of behavior by the police. Instead, all we're hearing is a disturbing silence.