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."
The episode got local news coverage. And the family eventually filed a lawsuit, which New York settled. But according to the figures that New York files with the federal government, the incident never happened.
Like all school districts across the country, New York is required to record every time a public school kid is held or tied down and report totals each year to the U.S. Department of Education. The number New York gave the government? Zero.
"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 â 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.
[For more of this story, written by Annie Waldman, go to http://www.propublica.org/arti...say-it-never-happene]
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