The lawsuit (PDF), brought by the American and New York Civil Liberties Unions on behalf of five students aged 13 to 18, says that school safety officers "have a long-standing pattern of abuse, unlawful arrests and excessive force against minority students who commit even minor infractions like talking back, being late for class or having a cell phone in school," Courthouse News reports.

"Aggressive policing is stripping thousands of New York City students of their dignity and disrupting their ability to learn," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU said in a statement. "Despite mounting evidence of systemic misconduct by police personnel in the schools, the NYPD refuses to even acknowledge any problems with its school policing practices. We are confident that the courts will compel much-needed reform."

One of the plaintiffs in the suit was 11 years old when she says she was "handcuffed and perp-walked into a police precinct for doing nothing more than doodling on a desk in erasable ink," a lawyer for the students said.