Police hand-cuff 5 year old girl at school (1 Viewer)

[Danny Tse]

The parent(s) of the 5 year old girl need to get "the paddle", along with the kid. In public. Really.

It was clearly shown that the 5 year old only "respected" the police once those officers came into the office. If the police didn't arrest the kid, she would've continue throwing her fits as soon as the police officers leave the office.

Again, the parent(s) of the 5 year old girl need to get "the paddle", along with the kid. In public.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Next on:


:b

 

[Neil Joseph]

Do we know if this child has a medical problem or not? If it was one of your children, what would your reaction be? Just 2 quick questions to contemplate.

 

[RobertR]

It's incomprehensible to me that this incident wasn't preceded by such unacceptable behavior at home, which the parents should have already dealt with. So no responsible parent should be in this situation.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

So please tell us what the magic age is when handcuffs should be used. Is it 5, 10, 15 or 20? Should a cop use their judgement? No, and I'll tell you why. If they apply different rules to different people, at some point they will, regardless of the circumstances, be accused of discrimination.

 

[Chris]

Having a son who's autistic (who can act out in the same kind of manner) if they were to handcuff him, I'd have no problem. (seriously) and we've authorized the school with access to straight jackets and other materials if they need them.

At a certain point in the behavior, the restraints are not as much to "contain" the child as they do help prevent the child from getting into a situation where they harm themselves.

I should add: if the girl does have a medical problem, and the school knew about it, then she would be listed and classified under an IEP, and her para-professional would be empowered to control behavior instances by removing her from the location and instituting whatever behavior modification was necessary.

I just note this to point out that while we can feel somewhat sympathetic to the family and the little girl, the police did their job and containment for her was something that if she was a special needs student would be forced upon her in different ways.

 

[RobertR]

Thanks for the post, Chris. I've yet to see anyone make a case for why handcuffing was "unacceptable".

 

[Chris]

Well, what's yet to be known is how they handcuffed her. If they used traditional metal cuffs, that's a bit of a stretch and maybe not as appropriate as other (bandage tie, velt cloth) alternatives. However, given the circumstances, the first rule is to always gain control over the situation and then move from there.

 

[Joseph S]

Really? I guess they just ought to shoot us all if they can't make judgements? If the bullet is good enough for one it's certainly good enough for all.

It's their job to be able to deal with various situations and make judgements. That includes discrimination. If they aren't capable of justifying their discriminatory behavior they have no businees doing the job they're employed to do. When they came there, she was clearly of no threat to them or herself, but they went straight to the handcuffs. Yes, the regular handcuffs.

The female in the office was acting like a fool. She egged on the kid on as if this was a game as she moved from side to side and blocking stuff. She showed zero effort to take control and zero effort to divert the kids anger with a distracting game or toy. The "assistant principal" appears to have never interacted with children in her life. She couldn't be any more withdrawn from that child than she appears to be. It's almost like there's one of the Romba vacuums in the office and she's frighteningly trying to create borders.

 

[LanieParker]

First of all, the incident goes back farther than the video shows. The teachers tried dealing with her reasonably in the classroom where it all started. The teacher got down to her level to try and defuse the situation and once it was made cleat that the girl would not cooperate with the teacher they removed her from the classroom and held her in the office.

There are rules regarding how teachers can handle hostile children. It varies from state to state and the teacher, in my opinion, did all she could in this situation. I've worked in schools and with children with behavioral problems, it's not easy to do. The school was smart to keep the tape rolling and to get it all documented to show that the teacher in no way provoked this little girl or caused her harm. The teacher says over and over, " this behavior is not appropriate" or " you need to calm down". As far as I am concerned this little girl should have been cuffed or restrained the first time she took a punch at the teacher.

If you listen carefully, in the video you can hear the policeman clearly state " Do you remember me?". Obviously there has been more than one occurance with this little girl. Also, in another article it said that the mother told the police the first time they were called out to deal with her that they could cuff her the next time.

 

[Dan Hine]

YES, she was threatening bodily harm.

First, she was climbing all over the table and chairs. Maybe that is fine at home for some people but school administration cannot allow it b/c IF someone gets hurt it is the schools fault...as mentioned already.

Second, did you not see the child swinging and kicking at the principal? I know it's been awhile since I was 5yrs old but I do know that I could hurt someone if I wanted to. ESPECIALLY if the adult, by law, is not able to fight back. And it would not be a far step from that student swinging to that student grabbing scissors off of that desk and stabbing.

The rules have to apply to her, especially at her age. If they do not apply to her when she's 5 then why should they apply to her when she's 10? If a behavior is wrong then it is wrong, period. If you don't teach students that early then the possibility of them learning becomes less likely.

All I know is that if I were the judge in this case, I'd laugh at the mom and lawyer and tell them to have a nice day...after I mandate that the child go to counseling and the parents take courses on how to manage their child.


- Dan

 

[DonnyD]

It's the parents who should be punished for rearing a child with that type of behavior. But with our permissive society, I am sure some liberal judge will do more harm to an already shakeled school system and police.

We had a neighbor last year whos 2 year old was the bully of the neighborhood. The mother of the child NEVER punished her for her actions even when she used a baseball bat on her brother and his playmates for no reason except to get somone's attention. I was so glad when they moved.

 

[Chris]

BTW, I think it's important to remember that the greater concern is for her harming herself rather then her harming others with her actions.

 

[MarkHastings]

Considering the schools are now in a bad place where they can't even touch the children without the parents suing the school, what other choice do they have? It's the parents who have given the school no other option but to have the authorities handle the situation this way. Unless the parents are going to allow the school system to handle the child (i.e. restraining them if they are out of control), then I am all for handfuffs in ANY situation (big or small).

 

[Drew Bethel]

OMG! The responses in this thread are actually scarier than a 5 year old kid being cuffed.

I asked where was the threat of bodily harm against the officers...so far no one has answered me.

I can only hope that the responses here are not representative of most Americans...

 

[RobertR]

The point was to restrain her so she couldn't harm herself as well as others.

I asked where was the bodily harm to the girl in being handcuffed, and got the nonanswer you claim to have received.

 

[Drew Bethel]

That's it? How insightful!

If you don't see the harm in calling a police officer for a five year old child, handcuffing that child, and escorting her like a away like a criminal then I'm done here. Have fun.

 

[Holadem]

Um... Drew, did you watch the video?

Please do offer something a little more practical than self-righreous indignation. Like an alternative solution. We're all ears.

--
H

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Do I like it? No. Do I understand it? Yes. The real harm is that they didn't have a matching pair for the mother. The kid needs help, parental or more. "Mom" is clearly is failing in her responsibility, and now wants to profit from her choices. At 5, it's not too late for the girl.

I would have maced her ass
Chuck

 

[Chris]

Drew, have you ever dealt one on one with a special needs child? I do every single day. I work in support groups for those with kids of special needs like a family member (OI) or child (Autism).

The concern here, as I've tried to intone is not bodily harm against an officer, but to act as containment for the child to prevent self harm.

I've watched a 6 year old child "lose it" and proceed to break an arm. I've seen my autistic child intentionally try to stab a fork through his hand.

Here, we don't know what's going on with this girl, though from the backstory I'm receiving from the SPTimes articles and messageboards, it is apparent she had similar behavior at home.

In this case, the idea here is to restrain the girl to prevent her from causing damage to herself - don't worry as much about concern for an officer.

In many times in life, adults are handcuffed, not because they are a risk to an officer, but because they are acting as a risk to themself (see public drunkenness).

I would hope that many other methods had been tried with this girl in the past, and that the school had worked up a method of containment where this was not a first option. However, an option to contain a child is a very important one for the school and for the safety of the child.

I know you are a new parent, and thus, many of these kind of things seem as though they are far away and things you can not consider. That's OK, and I respect your goals as a parent. I certainly wouldn't use handcuffs on my son, for example (he would cut himself up too much and enjoy the process of doing it, which would drive him into a tizzy).

What "most" people think is very irrelevent; I'm sure there are parents who find others parenting method "wrong" but because each child is very unique, the methods to handle each child must be equally unique. That is to say, while my school district and I have reached agreements about pressure vests, containment rooms, emergency medicine disbursement, it doesn't mean that I want every kid in America to have that kind of equipment at school.

As the story seems to unfold in their papers, the girl had been a repeated behaviorial problem and had self injured as well as having injured other classmates before. In this case, the school district has a duty to prevent self harm and harm to other children; so they took a good first step here and removed her from a public area (into what appears to be a principal's office).

Now, the reality is, none of us know the background and needs of the child. There are some children who react differently then others, and some children who have needs different then others. But in many cases where children have psychologically developed a problem with discipline and behavior control, forced restraints are considered one of the first alternatives as recommended by the American Medical Association and are considered a first opportunity to cause a child to settle down. The reason why my wife & I have used pressure jackets, etc. is not because we like to ball up a child, but because studies (and our own results) indicate that moments of forced restraint do, in a short period of time: lower heart rate, lower the adreniline output of a child, and end potential self-harming episodes. I've tried to be very frank about our children, which I do because I want to lay this out with a face on it. When we first started looking at sensory pressure as a method of containment, I was just morally opposed. I just did not want to do it. But in the last two years since we began, I've seen a child go from frequent serious self injuries (busted head, chewing fingernails off, intentional cutting) to a child who's reading at a 4th grade level at 6 years old, and when he's not having a breakdown is one of the most loving children I've ever known. I know there are parents who may find it terrible that we keep pressure jackets, etc. but I would take these results every day in comparison to rounds of drugs (although he does take medication, it's far less then what we could be giving him if we went the only-medication route, and we've managed to avoid Ritalin, which was my first priority).

Now, we know very little backstory. And I will not contend that the police were 100% justified. But I will contend that until we know all the details, to assume that they were "absolutely in the wrong" is not appropriate either, it's important that we know a lot more about the girl, her needs, past behaviors, to know what kind of response was needed here and whether or not they moved in a way that would help cool the situation down.