02.18.2021 | “We want a mental health approach taken,” said Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children, especially given the trauma students will likely bring to school in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. “If there is a student in emotional crisis, there’s no reason to restrain them.” 

In 2019, the police transported about 3,400 students to hospitals because they were experiencing an emotional crisis, or roughly 30% of all police interventions in schools that year, according to an analysis of city data by the New York Civil Liberties Union. About 87% of those students were Black or Latino, despite being 67% of the student population, and about 9% of those incidents involved the use of handcuffs. A 2017 report found students as young as five years old in emotional distress have been handcuffed. Read article