A 10-year-old Maryland boy interviewed by police after playing with fictitious money

A Maryland mother rang the alarm after her 10 – year – old disabled son was interviewed by police at her school after playing with cash on a school bus.

In a Change.org petition, Tiffany Kelly called police in Montgomery County, Maryland, for what she described as "excessive control of minority children".

She also criticized her son's school officials for not calling her to inform him of the incident with a police officer in mid-May.

"I was completely ignored as a parent of my son," she wrote in the petition, which had collected more than 400 signatures on Wednesday morning. "Please, help me understand why my disabled child is being interviewed without my knowledge or being present?"

Kelly, a mother of three who moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland, in December, said her son was playing with money bought on Amazon featuring "bright pink Asian symbols in the front and back "and dotted lines to win it. "not to be confused with real money.

The child, a fourth grade student in Montgomery County's public school system, was distributing fake money to other kids on the bus on May 14 as part of his socialization efforts, this with what Kelly was complaining about.

She added that the police had been called after the discovery of one of the tickets on the bus.

"The police came to school to interrogate my son," she wrote on the petition. "Absolutely, I did not know anything about that, I did not know anything about it until almost four o'clock at the end of the school day when the agent decided to call me. I later reported that counterfeit money / gambling / counterfeit money was not illegal to spend it, it absolutely did not do it.

Kelly told NBC News Wednesday during a phone interview that she did not know how long the agent had interviewed her son.

"By his own admission, no crime has been committed," Kelly said. "When do officers determine that a law has not been violated and move on?"

Kelly said that she thought her son had been questioned because he was a minority.

"I do not think I would have heard of that yet it was not black," she said.

Chevy Chase is an affluent suburb of Washington, DC, mostly white. Out of 9,500 inhabitants in 2010, 5% were black and 85% white, according to the US Census.

A spokeswoman for Montgomery County Public Schools told NBC News that his practice is to contact authorities if there is suspicion or evidence that a student is trying to use counterfeit money to buy anything. thing.

In the case of Kelly's son, "the police should not have been called," the spokesman said.

"The MCPS staff is working actively with the mother to address her concerns," the spokesman said. "There have been obvious mistakes on our part and we are working to make the process clear for the staff and that incidents like this no longer happen."

The Montgomery County Police did not immediately respond to NBC calls. The police department told NBC Washington that there was no racial profiling in its money investigation.

Kelly said that she had not removed her son from school, but had decided to tell her story to prevent such an incident from happening again in other children. .

"We need change from top to bottom," she said. "Officers need clear perimeters."