This is a crazy story. Two Harlem teens were detained as truants because two cops didn't believe that they were going to their private school on the Upper West Side. The Post reports that Latrice Jenkins and a classmate were taken to a truancy center in Riverdale because cops thought they should be going to Alfred Smith High School, a public school in the Bronx. And what's worse, the kids were on their way to taking a final exam!
The girls were stopped at the West 145th subway station and explained that they were headed to their final at the Smith School on West 86th Street, which the Post says costs $27,000/year. They didn't have school IDs, but one girl gave a card with the school's name and number to the cops.
"They did not even look at it," Jenkins said sadly. "I was so upset, because they would not listen to us.
"We kept telling them, 'We're late for our test. You're making us even later.' They took us all the way to The Bronx," Jenkins recalled.
The teens arrived two hours late for their exam, but officials allowed them to take it later that day.
The police claim it was a "misunderstanding," but Jenkins has another reason to be annoyed: She ended up getting a 70 on the exam and believes she was distracted while taking it. And the Post threw in another fact that makes the story a little more wrenching is that Jenkins' father's 1991 murder is still unsolved.
In another incident showing that subways, students and cops are a combustible combination, this May two sisters were charged with trespassing, theft of services, and disorderly conduct when one entered a subway without a Metrocard (her school had given her a note saying as much); a cop on the scene got involved and allegedly hit one of the girls on the head.
