25 Chicago Students Arrested for a Middle-School Food Fight

[Theophylact]

CHICAGO — The food fight here started the way such bouts do in school lunchrooms most anywhere: an apple was tossed, a cookie turned into a torpedo, and an orange plunked someone in the head. Within minutes, dozens of middle-school students had joined in the ruckus, and spattered adults were ducking for cover.

By the end of the day, 25 of the students, ages 11 to 15, had been rounded up, arrested, taken from school and put in jail. A spokesman for the Chicago police said the charges were reckless conduct, a misdemeanor.
That was last Thursday afternoon. Now parents are questioning what seem to them like the criminalization of age-old adolescent pranks, and the lasting legal and psychological impact of the arrests.

“My children have to appear in court,” Erica Russell, the mother of two eighth-grade girls who spent eight hours in jail, said Tuesday. “They were handcuffed, slammed in a wagon, had their mug shots taken and treated like real criminals.”

“They’re all scared,” Ms. Russell said of the two dozen arrested students. “You never know how children will be impacted by that. I was all for some other kind of punishment, but not jail. Who hasn’t had a food fight?”

The students were released into the custody of their parents on Thursday night, the police said. They were also suspended for two days by the school, the Calumet middle-school campus of Perspectives Charter Schools, in the Gresham neighborhood on the South Side.

Diana Shulla-Cose, president and co-founder of Perspectives Charter Schools, said that an on-campus police officer had called for backup as the food fight escalated and that the resulting heavy police presence had led in turn to the large number of arrests.

Ms. Shulla-Cose described the entire episode as “unfortunate” and added, “We don’t take this lightly.”

She also said the school was working individually with the families of students who were arrested to support them through a difficult time, and through the process of getting the youths back to classes.

School officials met with parents on Tuesday to explain the events from their point of view. But some parents questioned what they saw as the random nature of the arrests.

“My daughter said someone threw an apple at her, so she retaliated,” Shirlanda Sivels said. “I said, ‘Why didn’t they grab you, too?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t feel good about it, seeing her friends taken away.”

If the charges are not thrown out when the students go before a judge this month, criminal justice experts said, the accused will most likely be sentenced to community service or probation. Since they are juveniles, their records would remain confidential until adulthood — 17 under Illinois law — at which point the arrests would be expunged.

As Bruce Schneier has pointed out, "zero tolerance" really means "zero discretion"; it escalates everything, small or large, to the same level.

[The Real Bingo]

Zero tolerance = zero brains...an excuse for these idiot administrators to not have to think.

[tony_j15]

Why couldn't they just do in-school suspension? No one was injured, correct?

[Toadman]

No kidding. Take vids/pics and suspend those ID'd. A little 2-week or 30-day after-school "Community Service" detention oughta do the trick. You don't need cops or SWAT for a kiddie food-fight. But what do you expect when the disciplinarian role is taken away from school teachers? You get kids cuffed, stuffed and printed downtown.

[pickel]

I'd say, on the day for court, my kid had H1N1 and if they wanted him there they can come get him. No way would I send back to those IDIOTS.

[Shipuuden]

This is madness!!

[tony_j15]

Madness you say?