NY: Students allege safety agent abuse

by Vladic Ravich, Chronicle Contributor
12/11/2008
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20219427&BRD=2731&PAG=461&dept_id=574905&rfi=6

Students rallied Monday in front of Hillcrest High School to protest allegations of student abuse by the security personnel who roam the halls.

“There is an educational and civil rights emergency” at the Jamaica high school, according to Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who co-sponsored the event with immigrant rights group Desis Rising Up and Moving.

The rally was organized to call attention to the “abusive and threatening” actions of school safety agents, security officers contracted to keep peace in the school of nearly 3,000 students. The speakers also called for the City Council to adopt the School Safety Act, which would require more detailed public reporting of such incidents and would transfer jurisdiction over them from the Police Department Internal Review Board to the City Civilian Complaint Review Board.

The latest incident involves 16-year-old Rohan Morgan, who filed a personal injury claim against the city in August, alleging that on June 24 he was taken into a so-called “rubber room” with four security agents. He was allegedly handcuffed, beaten, sent to a psychiatric ward without parental consent and then suspended because he had brought his cell phone to summer school.

This followed an earlier alleged incident on March 25, when he says he was also beaten for having a cell phone in school. Morgan claims he sustained serious injuries from the incidents, including bruises over his body and a torn ligament in his knee that will require surgery.

“They just needed to cover up their actions,” Morgan said. “I said to another security guard, ‘you saw what they did to me?’ And they was like, ‘we didn’t see nothing’ … I tried to tell the assistant principal, but he was no help. He said he can’t interfere with what the security guards do — it wasn’t his business.”

While no physical evidence was presented at the press conference, the organizers said the records are included in the notice of claim filed with the city and cannot be released while the case is in litigation.

Advocates, parents and around 30 students chanted and waved signs demanding a change in the safety agent program, which has been run by the NYPD since 1998.

Deidra Jones, a 17-year-old senior at Hillcrest who attended the rally, said, “I noticed it myself, they take you in the back room and they strip search you just to get your phone off of you … I want them to tone their policy down with the whole strip search and cursing — it’s not necessary.”

Another student, recent graduate Kumar Heeralall, said he was also beaten, but did not report it, “because I was afraid.” When he heard about Morgan’s case, he decided to come forward and is now looking into legal action.

“The students are afraid of those who are charged with protecting them,” Lieberman said. “The police do not belong in school, they don’t belong running the school safety program. They belong in the schools when there’s an emergency, but every-day school life is not a criminal violation.”

George Geller, a spokesman for Teamsters Local 237 who represents the safety agents, characterized the event as “wild calls to remove school safety from the schools.” He said the agents are “indispensable” because they keep weapons and gang members out.

The organizers said these incidents were part of a “system wide problem” that turns public education into a “school to prison pipeline.” They called for the City Council to hold hearings on the School Safety Act, which would bring “transparency and accountability” to the School Security Agents program.

Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D- Astoria), who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said he does not have any immediate plans to bring the bill to a hearing “in this economic climate.” While he supports giving the CCRB a role in school safety issues, “[it] simply doesn’t have the resources to handle the additional case work — we’re busy fighting to maintain the funding they have now.” He added that school crime statistics are already available online because of an earlier bill he introduced.

Udi Ofer, the director of advocacy for NYCLU and a co-author of the School Safety Act (Intro. 816), disagreed. “This bill will require a much broader breakdown of incidents by sex, race and disability status.” He added that it is currently almost impossible to get details about the complaints filed against the school safety agents.

“We need transparency to deal with the 2,700 complaints we know the Department of Education has received between 2002 and 2007” Ofer said. “In regards to the funding of the CCRB, it is undemocratic when an elected official refuses to even hold a hearing on a bill that is supported by the majority of City Council members. We saw how fast the council could act on term limits, so why can’t they apply that momentum to school safety issues?”