Schools Pin Down Kids and Then Say It Never Happened

School hallway

(Photo: Lissandra Melo/Shutterstock)

In March 2012, police responded to a call from a Brooklyn public school about a five-year-old autistic boy who was having a tantrum. Officers held down the kindergartener, who was then tied to a stretcher and transported to a hospital.

The little boy's mother had been called to the school and witnessed the episode. "He was crying and screaming," she said. "They strapped him to that stretcher."



Some schools reported hundreds of restraints, which can include anything from pinning uncooperative children face down on the floor to tying them up with straps, handcuffs, or even duct tape.

"There's not even a remote possibility that the number zero is correct," said Johanna Miller, the advocacy director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

New York, the nation's largest school district, wasn't the only one to incorrectly report zero restraints to the federal government. So did Los Angeles and Chicago—the nation's second and third largest school districts.

Indeed, Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Lauren Huffman acknowledged restraints are allowed in some cases but said Chicago doesn't keep a tally of them. "It's our intention to do a better job tracking them centrally," she said.

Earlier this year, ProPublica detailed how kids are frequently restrained at public schools. As we reported, the government's first attempt at a nationwide count showed 163,000 instances of restraints in the 2012 school year.

Some schools reported hundreds of restraints, which can include anything from pinning uncooperative children face down on the floor to tying them up with straps, handcuffs, or even duct tape. Three-quarters of students who were restrained had physical, emotional, or intellectual disabilities.


After that report, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights made it mandatory for school districts to tell to the government how many times they have used restraints.


But under-reporting appears to be rampant. Our analysis found that more than two-thirds of all school systems reported zero instances of restraining a student or isolating them in so-called "seclusion" rooms.


"I think there needs to be a real cultural shift on restraints," Center said. "It has been a really common practice in schools for decades. If [schools] had to write down how many times they actually do it, they would have to change what they're doing."


Huffman, the spokeswoman from Chicago's public school system, said federal officials haven't contacted school officials there about their missing data.

Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said that although the district reported zero instances of restraints, it keeps its own tally of incidents involving disabled children. Advocates say such actions, which are called "behavioral emergency inventions," often come in the form of restraints. The Los Angeles Unified School District reported 103 interventions during the 2012 school year.

As for New York, the city says it doesn't count restraints because only police and emergency medical technicians are allowed to do them—a distinction federal authorities say is irrelevant. The U.S. Department of Education says all restraints at a public school are to be reported, no matter who does them.


This post originally appeared on ProPublica as “Los Angeles and New York Pin Down School Kids and Then Say It Never Happened” and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.