New York Cops handcuff and interrogate ‘bully’ boy, 7, for hours over missing $5... and now his family wants $250million

The mother of a 7-year-old boy in The Bronx, New York is suing the police for $250 million claiming they overreacted and treated her son like a hardened criminal after he was accused of stealing $5 from another student after school.

Instead of a simple trip to the principal’s office, Wilson Reyes was arrested in his third-grade classroom at Public School 114 on Cromwell Ave, handcuffed and held in a room for four hours. 

Later he was hauled off to the 44th Precinct station house for another six hours of interrogation and verbal abuse, according to the $250 million claim against the city and the NYPD.

Distraught mom Frances Mendez took this photograph of her son when she was finally able to see him at the local police precinct

‘Reyes was handcuffed and verbally, physically and emotionally abused, intimidated, humiliated, embarrassed and defamed,’ the documents say. 

The lawsuit also claims that Reyes was teased by officers shouting ‘thief’ and threatening to put him away ‘with the big boys.’ He was also charged with robbery.

Distraught mom Frances Mendez claims that when she first went to the precinct, she was told she couldn’t see her son.

When eventually she was allowed in, she found her son to be visibly upset and with his left wrist cuffed to the wall.

‘My son was crying, “Mommy, it wasn’t me! Mommy, it wasn’t me!” I never imagined the cops could do that to a child. We’re traumatized,’ Frances Mendez told The New York Post.

However the boy Reyes is accused of punching and robbing during the Dec. 3 incident says he is a bully who deserves his punishment after repeatedly picking on him.

Wilson Reyes was arrested in his third-grade classroom at Public School 114 on Cromwell Ave in The Bronx, New York

‘Wilson was the worst bully,’ Seth Acevedo told the Daily News. ‘He would call me names. He would punch and kick me. I wish they never took the cuffs off of him.’

The robbery charges against Wilson were dropped by the city’s Law Department on Dec. 26. The legal papers say another classmate later admitted the theft.

Reyes’ attorney Jack Yankowitz says that the arrest severely scarred the little boy, who 'continues to suffer from multiple body injuries, pain and distress, emotional and psychological injury and damage.'

A police spokesperson has described the claims in the lawsuit as ‘grossly untrue’ and deny that the child was held for six hours in the precinct. They insist that Wilson was treated like any other young suspect in a juvenile arrest and that they even let him have pizza.

The lawsuit claims that Reyes was hauled off to the 44th Precinct station house for another six hours of interrogation and verbal abuse