What, we're arresting six year olds now?

[mahogany]

What is our society coming to? Reading this left me with a really sick feeling.


http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09herbert.html

6-Year-Olds Under Arrest

By BOB HERBERT

When 6-year-old Desre’e Watson threw a tantrum in her kindergarten
class a couple of weeks ago she could not have known that the full
force of the law would be brought down on her and that she would be
carted off by the police as a felon.

But that’s what happened in this small, backward city in central
Florida. According to the authorities, there were no other options.

“The student became violent,” said Frank Mercurio, the no-nonsense
chief of the Avon Park police. “She was yelling, screaming - just
being uncontrollable. Defiant.”

“But she was 6,” I said.

The chief’s reply came faster than a speeding bullet: “Do you think
this is the first 6-year-old we’ve arrested?”

The child’s tantrum occurred on the morning of March 28 at the Avon
Elementary School. According to the police report, “Watson was upset
and crying and wailing and would not leave the classroom to let them
study, causing a disruption of the normal class activities.”

After a few minutes, Desre’e was, in fact, taken to another room. She
was “isolated,” the chief said. But she would not calm down. She
flailed away at the teachers who tried to control her. She pulled one
woman’s hair. She was kicking.

I asked the chief if anyone had been hurt. “Yes,” he said. At least
one woman reported “some redness.”

After 20 minutes of this “uncontrollable” behavior, the police were
called in. At the sight of the two officers, Chief Mercurio said,
Desre’e “tried to take flight.”

She went under a table. One of the police officers went after her.
Each time the officer tried to grab her to drag her out, Desre’e
would pull her legs away, the chief said.

Ultimately the child was no match for Avon Park’s finest. The cops
pulled her from under the table and handcuffed her. The officers were
not fooling around. In the eyes of the cops the 6-year-old was a
criminal, and in Avon Park she would be treated like any other felon.

There was a problem, though. The handcuffs were not manufactured with
kindergarten kids in mind. The chief explained: “You can’t handcuff
them on their wrists because their wrists are too small, so you have
to handcuff them up by their biceps.”

As I sat listening to Chief Mercurio in a spotless, air-conditioned
conference room at the Avon Park police headquarters, I had the
feeling that I had somehow stumbled into the middle of a skit on
“Saturday Night Live.” The chief seemed like the most reasonable of
men, but what was coming out of his mouth was madness.

He handed me a copy of the police report: black female. Six years
old. Thin build. Dark complexion.

Desre’e was put in the back of a patrol car and driven to the police
station. “Then,” said Chief Mercurio, “she was transported to central
booking, which is the county jail.”

The child was fingerprinted and a mug shot was taken. “Those are the
normal procedures for anyone who is arrested,” the chief said.

Desre’e was charged with battery on a school official, which is a
felony, and two misdemeanors: disruption of a school function and
resisting a law enforcement officer. After a brief stay at the county
jail, she was released to the custody of her mother.

The arrest of this child, who should have been placed in the care of
competent, comforting professionals rather than being hauled off to
jail, is part of an outlandish trend of criminalizing very young
children that has spread to many school districts and law enforcement
agencies across the country.

A highly disproportionate number of those youngsters, like Desre’e,
are black. In Baltimore last month, the police arrested, handcuffed
and hauled away a 7-year-old black boy for allegedly riding a dirt
bike on the sidewalk. The youngster was released and the mayor,
Sheila Dixon, apologized for the incident, saying the arrest was
inappropriate.

Last spring a number of civil rights organizations collaborated on a
study of disciplinary practices in Florida schools and concluded that
many of them, “like many districts in other states, have turned away
from traditional education-based disciplinary methods - such as
counseling, after-school detention, or extra homework assignments -
and are looking to the legal system to handle even the most minor
transgressions.”

Once you adopt the mindset that ordinary childhood misbehavior is
criminal behavior, it’s easy to start seeing young children as
somehow monstrous.

“Believe me when I tell you,” said Chief Mercurio, “a 6-year-old can
inflict injury to you just as much as any other person.”

Comments

[gezellig-girl.livejournal.com]

Really.

And what, exactly, are those kids who "don't deserve to be there" going to do when they're removed from school? Go to jail? Get a job? Can they come to your house every day and hang out until their parents get home from work?

[gentlemaitresse.livejournal.com]

They are the responsibility of their parents, just as they were prior to mandatory attendance laws. If their parents refuse to take responsibility for them, we have agencies to take them.

What do you propose be done with violent children?

[gezellig-girl.livejournal.com]

What would "refuse to take responsibility for them" include? Needing to work every day? Should we flood the foster care system with these children who are banned from schools? Should parents give up their jobs and be supported by the state to raise these banned-from-school children?

How would that be less of a drain on economic resources, as opposed to taking "violent children" (and I haven't seen any evidence saying this child was consistently violent, although this outburst was allegedly violent) and placing them in smaller classrooms, with a more attention from teacher with a specialized and/or advanced degree?

[gentlemaitresse.livejournal.com]

When you have a child, you are taking on a job. You should be prepared for this, but you're not, you'll need to make some tough choices. There is no need to be supported by the state. Give up cable and internet! People in this country who claim to be "poor" disgust me. I've been poor. I raised five children on $30,000 a year. That's pretty poor, but it was my choice. I could have made other choices. I could have put my children into public school and gone to work myself, rather than relying solely on the income of my husband. I could have given my baby up for adoption at the age of 18, and then used good birth control (or abstained from sex).

You make choices in life, and it's not other people's responsibility to handle the consequences for you. You still haven't given any good solution of your own. You've only insulted my proposals. It's so easy to do that, isn't it?

And for the record, I never said that calling the police on this particular girl was necessarily the right thing to do. Obviously, neither of us have enough information to make that decision. But this news reporter wants to pull on our heartstrings and try to persuade us that this was the wrong decision. She may be right, but I'm saying that *something* must be done about violent children! If that something is smaller classrooms (when the public schools are already spending over $5000 per child, even here in Florida, where there is a law governing classroom size already) then at least that would be something.

Ultimately, I think parents need to be held responsible. You bring them into this world, you are responsible for their upbringing, and that includes their behavior, unless you legally give that responsibility to someone else. And the last time I saw a story like this, the parent just blamed the school and the police.

Six years old and having *violent* outbursts? Something is obviously wrong here.

[mahogany.livejournal.com]

When you have a child, you are taking on a job. You should be prepared for this, but you're not, you'll need to make some tough choices. There is no need to be supported by the state.

This is all completely true; however, many people aren't, and (and here's where you see my socialist leanings coming out), I feel strongly that ideally we as a society should do what we can to provide the best possible education and educational environment for all children - particuarly those whose parents are falling short of their responsibilities. If we figure out ways to offset the amount of time these children spend in a poor home environment, if we figure out ways to ensure that these children have positive role models and dependable people to turn to in times of need, decent food, decent education, and a safe space to play and be kids, we're giving them a fighting chance. In addition to smaller class sizes, and additional specialized resources to accomodate learning and behaviour challenges, I would like to see hot food programs (breakfast, lunch, and yes, even supper if necessary) providing wholesome nutritious food available to all children, and also supervised, free after school sports/recreation programs (not just school team stuff). One of my former clients was involved in establishing a recreation program that gave kids a place to hang out and stuff to do until 8:00 at night, in partnership with some large corporations for an inner city school, and the results were amazing. The reduction in behaviour related problems and gang violence (we're talking about older kids here) was astounding, and the program was just in its infancy at the time.

I'm not ignoring the fact that people when people make their beds they should lie in them, I guess I lean more toward the attitude that kids deserve a fighting chance - they're innocent in this whole process, and many of them will succumb to their circumstances unless they're helped. With the proper environment and encouragement, many of them can and will break the negative cycles that have trapped their parents.

[gezellig-girl.livejournal.com]

Forget it. I can see from your profile you're a Libertarian. I might as well go shout into the wind. Consider yourself to have won the argument.

[gentlemaitresse.livejournal.com]

How very liberated and open-minded of you.