Bob Herbert's column on Monday (it's behind the Times firewall) talked about the latest instance of schools going to the maximum punishment for unruly kindergartners: arrests.
As a parent of two young kids, one of them the same age as the girl in the story, to say I'm outraged at this latest instance is a vast understatement. The criminalization of bad behavior by children is an extremely unsettling development.
Because of the firewall, I'm going to pick a couple of passages and give analysis after so you can get the idea of what's going on here after the jump....
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?"
You know, my mother grew up in western Kentucky, and to her knowledge, they didn't arrest young kids for misbehavior. Why this Florida town apparently sees fit to arrest them on something approaching a regular basis (read the chief's answer again) is well beyond me.
Moving on:
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...
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.
Well, stomp on frogs and shove a crowbar up my nose, we've got us a real lawman here. He took a six-year-old CHILD to the COUNTY FUCKING JAIL to book her for throwing a temper tantrum. Wow. I'm impressed at the professionalism of not setting a double standard. God forbid the school do something like, oh, I don't know, call the fucking parents!
My youngest brother is mentally disabled. He also has some motor functions that are impaired, and he's suffering from mental health issues which have never been adequately diagnosed. He exhibits the symptoms of being bipolar, but the medicines for that did not work. He has regularly for years now thrown fits in which he starts hitting people and whatnot. Because of his functional impairment, he can't deliver full force, so when he has hit people, he hasn't injured anyone.
One time four years ago, he went on a prolonged rage period, and the school called the police, who did arrest him like this child. They took him to the mental health facility at the hospital, though. My brother was later charged by the county, which meant we had to get a lawyer and all this other crap, and when my mother got to court with him, the judge tossed the charges in under 10 minutes. He said that it was clear my brother did not have an understanding of what he did wrong and couldn't control his actions. He was pretty upset from what I was told afterwards. At that time, my brother's functional level was of that of a seven-year-old.
So, between that and my kids, I full well understand this issue, and both the school and the police had a lot of options, but instead they chose to handcuff a six-year-old child and while they could have taken her to a juvenile facility or the police station so they could contact the parents and simply have them pick up their child, they took this little girl to the county jail and treated her like a dangerous felon. In fact, they charged her with felonies, just to top off the list of ignorant, backwards thinking these morons exhibited.
We have set levels in the judicial system for determining the capacity of a person to understand the rightness or wrongness of their actions and the consequences of them. That bar is well high of the six-year-old mark, and for good reason. My kids try to jump off our balcony, for instance. They have been told repeatedly that they will get hurt, and even though they are very smart and do well in school, they still try because they don't understand the consequences yet. This child didn't understand the consequences of her actions, because typically in this situation in the past at home she simply got a timeout or a small spanking. Yet these morons running the show in Florida treated her like an armed robber.
And as Herbert pointed out, the other disturbing trend is that black children are the ones getting arrested for this behavior. Coming off Bill Bennett's ignorant remarks about aborting black babies to reduce the crime rate, it's hardly a wonder that in the South, where you still have plenty of proud "Stars and Bars" wavers, including some state capitols, that black children are the ones being arrested.
I'd say these people should be ashamed of themselves, but apparently they have no shame. "Do you think this is the first six-year-old we've arrested?" Yeah, I thought it was. How tragic it is that I was so wrong.