In some states, your 6-year-old child can be arrested. Advocates want that changed

[Jilly_in_VA]

Kaia Rolle was 6 years old when police arrested her at a Florida school in 2019. The then first-grader was accused of kicking and punching staff members while throwing a tantrum.

A police officer used zip ties to handcuff her. The video of her crying and pleading with a school resource officer not to handcuff her sparked widespread outrage at the time. It also led to changes in state law.

But Kaia is still feeling the effects of that day more than two years later, her grandmother, Meralyn Kirkland, tells NPR. Kaia's in therapy for PTSD, she says. "She also still suffers from separation anxiety."

Kaia's ordeal prompted Florida to set a minimum age for a juvenile's arrest. It was part of a wider police reform bill and says no one under 7 years of age can be arrested, charged or adjudicated unless they've committed a forcible felony. Those felonies are defined by the state.

But there's growing debate in several states about whether the minimum age should be higher, that children behaving badly shouldn't be viewed as criminal.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/02/1093313589/states-juvenile-minimum-age-arrested-advocates-change

Remember the 6 year olds arrested in Murfreesboro, TN, for a neighborhood dustup? I do.

[Sneederbunk]

1. Then there is the six year old that plugs the teacher.

[Jilly_in_VA]

2. Do you REALLY think

Last edited Tue Jan 10, 2023, 02:21 PM - Edit history (1)

he understood the consequences of his actions? If you do, you aren't a bit familiar with 6 year olds.

[Chainfire]

4. Yea, really, the six year old needs to be sent to state prison for life without parole!

When I was in grammar school we had kids that pitched tantrums. The teacher would deal with it without cops, cuffs or arrests...One of the most frequent child hissy fitters that I remembered grew up to be a successful accountant....

[uncle ray]

6. Can the parents be trusted to supervise an attempted murderer?

[Jilly_in_VA]

7. Calling a 6 year old child an "attempted murderer"

is just WRONG. If you really think that way, you might need to examine your thinking. This is a child who may have seen a little too much, whether real life or TV, but I am arguing that he doesn't fully comprehend the consequence of his actions. A 6 year old still doesn't have a full comprehension of death. What this child needs is therapy. A lot of it. So do his parent(s). We don't know what kind of home he comes from, and there is no use speculating right now.

[Bettie]

11. And the kid shouldn't be arrested

but is in need of some mental health care and an evaluation of the home environment, because that is not normal behavior.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. The system itself is violence.

[Bayard]

5. WTF?!

Teachers call the cops to deal with unruly first-graders? What happened to--Go stand in the corner! That happened to me one time. I whacked another girl over the head for stealing a picture my big sister had drawn for me. My shirt sleeve was soaking wet from crying into it.
And my mother always said--you get in trouble at school, you'll get it 10 times worse when you get home. It was a powerful motivator.

[Jilly_in_VA]

8. Ever since there have been cops in schools

teachers and principals have deferred discipline to them. "oh, that's too hard, I'll just call the SRO." (or whatever they call them) It's so easy to just wash your hands of the problem. Yea verily, Pontius Pilate.

[JT45242]

9. This is so much more complicated than most non-teachers know...

I was an elementary student in the 1970s. A HS in the 1980s and taught from the mid 90s to about 2014 (20 years in HS and JH), when I left teaching permanently.

I'll start with a story from when I was a union rep, department head, and also parent in the early 2010s. There was a child diagnosed with ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) and at least six other acronyms who was a known biter in one of my children's classes in 1st grade. He had a FULL TIME personal aide in addition to the teacher and several other aides for that class and bit children between 15 and 20 times during the school year. We tried to have him removed from the general population because the IDEA Act requires that every child be placed in the least restrictive educational environment for learning of both that individual and the other individuals in the class. The intent was to eliminate sending all learning disabled (LD) kids to institutions or into self contained classrooms that did little to help the LD kids learn and prepare for a future life. He was hindering the learning of others which could be used to trigger sending the child to another school with services geared towards his problems. The district refused because the mom had threatened to sue the district if he was taken out of the regular classroom. Many districts has lost similar lawsuits so the district lawyers told them to cave. Even though the law was on the side of the least restrictive environment for ALL students was that a student this unruly and potentially dangerous should not be mainstreamed, the district caved. This is fairly common. (Another reason why teachers flee the profession).

The kid knew enough to say "You can't touch me!" when he ran away from the aide and attacked another child, teacher, aide, custodian or whatever. Severeal kids had to go to urgent care from bites that year.

When most of us who regularly post on DU were kids, the adage that "the teachers punishment is the least of your worries at home" was likely true. Over the 20 years that I taught, the tide had shifted to "what did the tecaher do wrong to you" to "how can we sue the teacher and the school."

Not sure what else a school can do some times? Perhaps a stay in a juvenile detention center might help, I do not know. But what I do know is that schools as an entity with liability are not equipped to deal with many kids who years earlier would never have been mainstreamed for the safety of the kid and the other kids in the class.

The law is actually set up so that a kid with certain diagnoses on their IEP are taught that there are no consequences for their actions, because the schools have no power to punish nor the ability to send the kid to a more appropriate placement unless the parents agree and have the resources necessary to make that happen.

[FakeNoose]

12. Wow! I had no idea

When my son attended grade school in the mid-seventies and early-eighties they were still debating whether a teacher had the right to paddle misbehaving students. Eventually it was left for a school principal to decide and carry out such punishment. Nowadays it seems like no corporeal punishment is allowed and teachers have little authority or discretion in that regard.

[Hortensis]

13. My DIL is a special ed teacher, and some of the children

can become violent. A teacher was hospitalized last year after a young child managed to knock her unconscious, jumping repeatedly on her, landing with his whole weight on her head and body. He's large for his age and had learned how to use his weight as a weapon. It's not the first time, just the first time his teacher was hospitalized.

There are other stories with other children. The teachers have protective gear available if they have time to don it, and there are procedures in place defining when one teacher shouldn't try to control a child alone, etc. By far most of the time class isn't like this, of course, but bites and so on are not uncommon.

No doubt police can be called if necessary. In GA a 6-year-old cannot commit a crime so can't be arrested for it, but there are juvenile laws regarding unruly behavior and being delinquent.

I don't know what the procedures actually are for when the special ed teachers and other district professionals can't establish workable control of a child, other than after a pattern of intractable problems is established transfer out of the elementary school setting to other special programs.

[Jilly_in_VA]

10. In this particular case

state law does not allow the child to be placed in the juvenile detention system. Nor do I think a child under the age of 12 should be placed in that system. Those children properly belong in psychiatric care, some residential, some not. However, as we all know, that system is also overloaded and mismanaged due to chronic underfunding. Until our society actually cares about children, which it never has, this kind of crap will continue to happen---more so under RepubliKKKan administration than Democratic, but both parties bear some guilt, just not equally.