The melee at Miami Edison was unfortunate but a tremendous lesson for the entire community. We cannot escape the need for bilateral communication to avoid such situations. From each perspective, all involved thought they were right and perhaps they were to some extent but our community cannot survive with such demonstrations of violence.

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Vague arrests muddle Edison High case

Posted on Sat, Mar. 08, 2008

BY EVAN S. BENN AND TRENTON DANIEL

[email protected]

ALEXIA FODERE/FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

A Miami Edison Senior High school student looks down as she is accused of resisting a police officer with violence. The 15-year-old girl suffered injuries during an arrest in school Feb. 29.

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Most of the Miami Edison High students arrested in a recent school fight will be hard to convict of any crime, legal experts say, because police failed to say in their arrest affidavits exactly what the students did.

Officers responding to the Feb. 29 brawl changed the names and contact information on each student's form, but the charges and descriptions of what happened are almost identical on 23 of the 26 forms.

''Form affidavits are a huge red flag that the arrests were done hastily,'' said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a Miami lawyer and past president of the local American Civil Liberties Union. [More]