Story Archive

Turned in at Albuquerque

Albuquerque, N.M., authorities were summoned to the Cleveland Middle School by a school resource officer to make an arrest for “interfering with public education,” court papers show. Responding officers did in fact make the arrest. The criminal: a seventh-grader, whose teacher was displeased that he had “burped audibly.” Yes, really. The unnamed student’s family has filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the school, in which the boy complains of being strip-searched in an earlier incident, when he had been suspected of selling pot; he wasn’t charged in that case. Last year, says Shannon Kennedy, the boy’s attorney, she won a class-action settlement with Albuquerque police over arrests of minors. That case “was started by a girl who was arrested for not wanting to sit next to the stinky boy in class,” Kennedy said. (AC/ABC) ...If I were a kid, I’d be more concerned about sitting in the stinky police department’s jurisdiction.