The Washington Times

Cuffed kid lands NYPD in $250 million court case

A couple Bronx cops hauled a 7-year-old boy out of his classroom, handcuffed him and interrogated him for 10 hours all over a dispute involving $5, the boy’s parents are charging.

“My son was crying, ‘Mommy, it wasn’t me! Mommy, it wasn’t me!’ I never imagined the cops could do that to a child. We’re traumatized,” Wilson Reyes‘ distraught mom, Frances Mendez told The New York Post Tuesday night. “Imagine how I felt seeing my son in handcuffs. It was horrible. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

In a $250 million lawsuit against the city and the NYPD, officers are said to have shown up at the boy’s school in the morning on Dec. 4. They handcuffed and held Wilson in a room there for four hours before hauling him off to a station house for another six hours of interrogation.”Reyes was handcuffed and verbally, physically and emotionally abused, intimidated, humiliated, embarrassed and defamed,” the court documents say. He was then charged with robbery.

The overreaction came after police received a 911 call for robbery and assault, The Post reports. Wilson was accused of forcibly stealing $5 from another student. It is unclear who made the emergency call. The robbery charge against Wilson was dropped on Dec. 26. Inspector Kim Royster told the Post Tuesday that the story was “grossly untrue in many respects, including fabrication as to how long the child was held in the precinct which was less than half of the time mentioned.”

Court papers say another classmate later admitted the theft.

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