The Write Punishment?

A 12-year-old junior high school student in Forest Hills, N.Y., who scribbled “I love my friends” on her classroom desk got a decidedly unfriendly reaction from school authorities. She was arrested, handcuffed and led off to the local police precinct.

The Queens girl told officials she was passing time waiting for her Spanish teacher to hand out homework when she began to write on the desk with what turned out to be an erasable marker pen. When her handiwork was discovered, instead of being asked to wash it off she was arrested, led out of school in cuffs to the precinct across the street and held for several hours.

A New York City Education Department told the Daily News it was a mistake to have had the student arrested. “Based on what we’ve seen so far,” he said, “this shouldn’t have happened.”

Paul Browne, a police spokesman, told the newspaper “Even when we’re asked to make an arrest, common sense should prevail and discretion should be used in deciding whether an arrest or handcuffs are really necessary.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union recently filed a class-action lawsuit against the city for using what it described as excessive force in handling unrelated situations in middle and high schools in other areas around the metropolitan area.

The desktop artist was suspended from school and assigned eight hours of community service in family court. She also has to write a book report and an essay on what she learned from the incident.