Arresting the kids

[MrScorpio]

More and more children being arrested for trivial things…

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police. The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back….

“Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old”.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

Links: http://thinksquad.tumblr.com/post/50774382791/more-and-more-children-being-arrested-for-trivial

[HiPointDem]

1. kr. horrifying stuff. what kind of kids are we molding?

[Democracyinkind]

3. Now it's you asking the right kind of question.

Imagine how complacent we would be if we'd were exposed to this when we were kids. Imagine generation after generation living through this. What would the effects be?

I already think that we are dangerously complacent.

[HiPointDem]

4. i don't know that i'd grow up complacent under those conditions. i think i'd grow up angry & anti-

social.

[Democracyinkind]

5. That's a good point too.

But I think it has also a kind of "shut up and behave" of effect. But maybe it's for the good. If children are abused by the system in all the same ways as adults, there might be some revolutionary energy building from that. Or simply destructive energy - which is ok with them because there won't be any jobs outside of being a for-profit-prisoner for these kids anyway once they grow up.

[HiPointDem]

7. it probably has both, depending on the kid and his situation. but it seems pretty clear that

when arrest & involvement with the justice system is a semi-routine consequence of minor childhood misbehavior, you're molding different human 'types' than in an earlier era.

[newfie11]

14. That would be my idea as a child

So now one must never question authority.
Great way to mold a civilian population for an olagarg country.

[defacto7]

2. Absolutely asinine.

What is this country doing? We are truly a laughing stock in the civilized world. The list of atrocities to youths in America is a much longer list than this, but this list of 19 shows a gross injustice applied to our future... except maybe for #12, that one is kinda scary.

[Douglas Carpenter]

6. not to sound too conservative.. but I can't help but wonder if this is at least partly caused by the

unintended consequences of taking away the old fashioned approaches to discipline. Creating an atmosphere where teachers and school officials are afraid to discipline students out of fear of legal retaliation. So, instead - they just call the police. I recall awhile back reading about a couple of obnoxious 12 and 13 year olds who ran down the hall of their middle school swatting girls on their behinds. Now if this had happened back in the 60's in rural western PA when I was that age - they would have been sent to the principle's office and paddled and that would have been the end of it. But instead, following a more enlightened approach - they were arrested, finger printed - jailed for a few days - given two different court hearings and they were going to be registered as sex offenders. I'm not suggesting the old approach was the right one either. But if it is a question of what is worse - sending them to the principles office to be paddled or finger printing them, jailing them and registering them as sex offenders - I don't think there is much doubt which one is the lesser evil.

[nessa]

22. I was thinking the exact same thing. I don't think corporal punishment should be brought back.

I don't think teachers or administrators should be hitting students.

I think they need to be able to remove them from the school. Maybe a free and appropriate education should require some responsibility on the part of the student.

[Douglas Carpenter]

23. I don't think it should be either... but if if was matter of which was the lesser evil

I mean if your 12-year-old got in some trouble over some pretty typical obnoxious pre-adolescent or early-adolescent misbehavior - what would be worse - corporal punishment or being arrested, finger-printed, jailed and registered as a sex offender?

[hollysmom]

8. those private prisons need their full occupancy - train them young.

[Go Vols]

32. +1

[DeSwiss]

9. K&R

[Pelican]

10. Scared and stupid adminstrators along with scared and stupid parents....

... enacting idiotic zero tolerance policies that will result in an even stupider and even more scared generation of "students."

Coupled with an inabilty to recognize excellence and punish failure, it paints a pretty gloomy picture.

[ReasonableToo]

21. I have zero tolerance for...

... zero tolerance policies!

[Pelican]

24. Intolerance will not be tolerated!

[Historic NY]

11. And these are just from schools, what about in their homes...

parents sometimes call routinely for police to discipline their children.

[Downwinder]

12. Can we say this is a "Police State," yet?

[Live and Learn]

13. This terrifies me. What have we become?

How the heck did we get to this point? I lived through it but still find it hard to believe and horrific.

How long will it take people to realize that their child being swept in to a private prison or private juvenile "detention" agency is much more likely than any of their family being harmed by a "terrorist"?

We sold our children out in the name of false security.

[malaise]

15. Private prisons have to be filled

Fugg the kids

[drdtroit]

16. USA = Mental Illness

[newfie11]

18. That must be the problem with our government

[Unknown Beatle]

17. As a kid I was taught to trust police officers.

Now, as an adult, I don't trust them.

Kids are going to be growing up not trusting the police because actually, the pigs can't be trusted nowadays. A police officer will not hesitate to taser or pepper spray anybody for any reason whatsoever.

Oh, the stories I could tell involving the police and myself back in the early seventies. Hint: My roommates belonged to the SDS while I was attending college and I was pretty much a radical myself. But I digress..

[LibertyLover]

25. I have not been able to tell my 11 year old daughter that at all

I don't trust the police anymore and I cannot tell her that she should.

[1-Old-Man]

35. I'm in the same boat as you

I do not trust the police (local, County, State, or Federal) at all. The one thing that is common among all totalitarian states of the last 150 years it is that they exercise their authority over their own citizens by way of the police. I think its also interesting to note that at least in my readings no dictator ever had trouble taking control of the police force or was able to take control of the country before they took control of its police forces. In short police forces have a history of being used as a primary tool of oppression and I daresay that not one of them is free of corruption - meaning employing the selective enforcement of laws as patronage - at some level and frequently at a glaringly obvious level. Need anyone here be reminded of how Occupy-(you fill in the blank) were treated all around the country?

A harsh critic of the police once said that as far as he could see a cop was just a garbageman with a badge and a gun. By that he meant that in many communities the job requirements and pay were the same for a policeman or a garbageman and that therefore each job attracted the same quality of applicant. In far too many places its a valid argument.

[tblue37]

42. Or for no reason at all. nt

[Nanjing to Seoul]

19. Remember, dial 911 if you have a problem. The police will solve it is what we're told

Police have become our marriage counselors, our crisis handlers, our child psychologists, our family counselors and our discipline.

Remember when problems in school and in the home were handled by parents, teachers and administrators? Not anymore. Now we leave it in the hands of people who have a itchy trigger fingers, God complexes, too much testosterone and not enough intellect.

Badge sniffers, defend all this police action please. Christ, I loathe law enforcement. Why can't a police officer just say "sorry, I am not getting involved in this. No crime has been committed" instead of taking hog tying five year olds, pepper spraying seven year olds and arresting kids for carrying plastic fucking butter knives?

WTF happened to my country??? Fuck it. . .I'm an educator and I will never teach or be an administrator in the US again. . .not in this punitive and draconian environment. Welcome to the United States of Police. Your Civil Privileges have been revoked!

[MindPilot]

26. doubleplus infinity

I agree completely. We have become stupid.

[Historic NY]

28. Your blaming the police.......really

Who called the police in these incidents???????

The School !!

Did you ever think that the dictates of school policy are formulated by the parents through their school boards. Nah....

The police were never suppose to fill in for the roll of the school. Somehow people began to expect them to do all the things you mentioned. The question to be asked is what happened to parenting? Who makes these arcane school rules, or in the very least why. Ask the School Administrators. In the end people kick the can down the road thinking the police can straighten it out. When they can't, it not their job period. This stuff wouldn't happen to Little Johnny or Little Susie but in our litigious society.

[Romulus Quirinus]

30. The officers could easily have looked around and said "Nope."

In fact, I'd say that happens most of the time. You just don't hear about it because it's common sense.

[Historic NY]

33. Thats so easy to say w/o all the facts.....

isn't it. But why waste the police officers time in the first place.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

38. Again, hog tying a five year old? You're defending this?

You're defending pepper spraying a seven year old?

Sickening! Absolutely sickening. Badge sniffers are all the same. And before you run and alert me to a jury, I've been using badge sniffers for a long time.

[Historic NY]

39. Your complaining because the school couldn't handle the child...

get a grip on something its sickening.

Where did pepper spraying come in and hog tying. In my post.

EOM.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

41. read the op. you're defending the indefensible

The school couldn't handle the child? This from someone who probably never taught or worked in a school.

Handling a child in school is not hard. I've done it since 2006.

Look at police actions against five and seven year old in the OP then talk to me.

When did DU become a haven of badge sniffers and gundamentalists?

[tblue37]

43. "EOM" is supposed to go in the subject line of a post that has ONLY

a subject line, but no further message in the message box.

That way, the reader knows the subject line is all there is to the message, and he/she will not waste time opening the post to read the nonexistent message. (Writing "nt"--"no text"--serves the same purpose.)

[lbrtbell]

20. And they wonder why parents homeschool?

I hear about things going on at our local school, and it makes me sick to think my tax dollars are being spent on an institution that is well-known for things like allowing bullying.

The teachers are also horrible--the kids get iPads, and assignments are "handed out" on them. The teachers literally refuse to have any face-to-face interaction with kids...in the classroom! And they have a terrible attitude toward parents who care about education. My friend was appalled when her son was getting failing grades, and they were going to pass him into the 8th grade. She pulled him out of school, and began homeschooling him. She's a local librarian, very smart, and is definitely doing right by her boy.

Now, I'm not saying all public schools are like this, but too many are.

If I had a school-aged child in this area, I would be homeschooling, too.

It breaks my heart to see what's going on nowadays. Arresting these little kids for stuff like this? I can't believe the cops wouldn't arrive on the scene and say, "Are you honestly wasting our time with this?"

[Douglas Carpenter]

27. I'm hearing bad things too - especially about the way schools are so geared toward teaching for the

test - that any creative side of school is lost. However, I have talked to family counselors I know on the subject of home schooling and they definitely feel strongly that the lack of socialization skills by children they have seen who have been home schooled is so disturbing that they don't recommend that at all. From everything I can gather - the best education does come from expensive private schools that have small enough classes to provide individual attention. But needless to say - not all of us can afford that.

[ellie]

29. It's a world gone mad.

[Xyzse]

31. This is one of the reasons I vehemently oppose "No Tolerance" policies

I find this disgusting, and people really need to chill out.

[LongTomH]

34. I think this is part of an overall pattern of over-reaction.

There's another story on GD of a man getting a 13 year sentence for writing anti-bank graffiti in washable chalk. We've also seen stories of old ladies or people in wheelchairs being tasered by cops.

I'm not enough of a sociologist to dissect the reasons behind this; but, I see a link to the general rightward turn of American society in recent years.

[limpyhobbler]

36. Completely disgusting. What has this country come to. nt

[woo me with science]

37. Authoritarian culture.

Private prisons.

Corporate morality.

This country is very, very sick.

[felix_numinous]

40. Just more collateral damage

that will come around and bite them in the a** in the future. Sometimes I wonder if that's the whole idea.

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. It is not stupidity, it is not over reaction...

It is part of a very hard trend we are on... to force on conformity. I could go into the theory of social control... and closing societies, but I will let that one lie for the moment.