A mother was angry when her son was placed in handcuffs and taken to juvenile prison for making his classmates laugh during class.
The mother, who was not named, filed a lawsuit against the school principal and the police officer who arrested her son on a charge of interfering with public education.
The mother of Albuquerque, New Mexico, claimed that her son’s arrest was unlawful and resulted in excessive force.
However, a federal appeals court denied her claims and ruled that the police officer was justified in arresting the boy who was disturbing his class by burping too loudly in his classroom.
The mother said that her 13-year-old son was at most the class clown when he began burping loudly to make his classmates laugh during class.
In the lawsuit, the mother’s attorney wrote: “At worst, the boy, was being a class-clown and engaged in behavior that would have subjected generations of schoolboys to an after-school detention, writing lines, or a call to his parents.”
However, the school believed that the arrest was necessary after the boy, who was in a physical education class, disturbed the class and continued doing so after he was sent out of class.
The school said that the boy began making other students laugh with fake burps. The teacher sent him to the hallway, where he continued burping while leaning into the entrance-way to the classroom so the students could hear him.
Officer Arthur Acosta, who was assigned as the resource officer at the Cleveland Middle school, arrested the boy and he was suspended for the rest of the year.
