quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I'm actually surprised that the officers could/would arrest a 6 year old. In Arkansas, you have to be at least 10 to be charged with a crime. And besides, just because the police are called doesn't mean they have to make an arrest.

quote:

Originally posted by Skull Leader:
This really pisses me off.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/ne...ki7irqe74-story.html

6 year old threw a tantrum and kicked and punched some school employees. The police were called and this little girl is now scarred/scared by/of the police because some administrators can't handle a six year old!

Are there some circumstances where an arrest would be appropriate? Sure, but this was obviously not one of them!

Do your own dirty work! Stop making police the bad guys!

quote:

The arrest report Turner completed said that a member of the school’s faculty, Beverly Stoute, had requested to press charges against Kaia, something the school has denied.

quote:

Kirkland said her granddaughter had sleep apnea, which could cause her to act out in school.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I'm actually surprised that the officers could/would arrest a 6 year old. In Arkansas, you have to be at least 10 to be charged with a crime. And besides, just because the police are called doesn't mean they have to make an arrest.


And honestly, this is the massive double-edged sword of School Resource Officers. I've dealt with it myself.

After the rise in school shootings, there was a big push to put officers in schools. And SROs have massive additional benefits beyond just active shooter response/deterrence too.

But the big potential downside is that once officers were in schools, the schools started eyeing the officers as a means to enforce school discipline, attempting to foist their responsibilities off on the cops.

Used to be, teachers handled the classroom discipline stuff and administrators (primarily assistant principals) handled the bigger discipline stuff and stuff that happened outside of the classroom. But the availability of SROs also seems to have coincided with a massive upswing in the amount of work that administrators started having to devote to Special Education related issues, government mandated compliance paperwork, etc. So I guess it was a natural instinct for these administrators to see an opportunity to pass the buck on discipline to the newly available officers as a means to free up time for their newly incoming SPED and compliance responsibilities.

It's also a way for the schools to shift the liability for the disciplinary decisions onto someone else, so the furious helicopter parents couldn't blame the schools when their kid got into trouble.

As a result, there's been a huge nationwide upswing in juvenile arrests/citations for school-related issues that in previous years would have been handled in-house as a school discipline issue. Nowadays, if a kid does something like get into a fight at school or yell at a teacher, instead of having an administrator give them detention or a suspension, they often end up getting arrested or ticketed by a cop instead (or additionally).


This is where it requires a solid relationship between the schools and their SROs to have clearly defined roles, without this tendency towards "SRO mission creep" or attempted reliance on SROs as school discipline enforces. And it takes SROs and supervisors who are willing to stand their ground and say "No, that's a school issue, not a police issue... You as the school need to handle that".

(This latter part is complicated by some SROs having their paychecks paid either fully or partially by the schools themselves, which creates a bit of a conflict in situations like that, and can make the SROs feel like they can't tell the schools "No".)

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Related:
In public, I would quite frequently have parents with younger children come up to me and spout this crap:
"Junior, you better behave or this policeman will put you in jail".
Thats great parenting!

quote:

Originally posted by irreverent:
What Ronin wrote. I have some experience with this... my son attends a public school where each year thus far, he’s had a classmate finally removed from the classroom for being a “danger” to others. He’s 7.

I discovered that the teachers are not allowed to touch a child acting out, they actually have to clear all the other kids from the class instead, and call for reinforcements (not necessarily cops, but help to manage the child who has become a “danger”). And they can’t touch unless the child is a danger to itself or others.

I couldn’t fricking imagine. My kid (and the rest of his class) had to sit and watch another throw a shit fit regularly - including hitting and screaming at the teacher(s)- for weeks before they finally had enough documentation of efforts made and pulled the child.

Don’t get me wrong, they shooed all the other kids into a different class when the action really started to get fierce, but still. So my son had basically no schooling for weeks. He walked into a lit fuse on a daily basis, and had to wait to see how the day would play out. Again, he’s 7. And I only found out about the troubles from him over time. Because the teachers aren’t allowed to discuss these things with people who aren’t the parents. Color me pissed, but their hands are tied. When I first went to a meeting to bitch I found out about the many ways in which their hands are tied. And how much worse some other parents whose kids were in upper grades had it. As others have said, it’s a wonder society isn’t worse. No joke.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
Is this not also a product of mainstreaming children with mental handicaps? Me and wife always volunteered to help out when kids were in elementary and middle. I had never experienced the situation of handicapped child with adult “guide” that follow them throughout the day. The child was continually disruptive and later on I learned that was the norm. On bad days it was way worse.

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
If this had happened when I was a kid. the teacher and principal would have slapped me silly. If that didn't have the desired effect your father would have been called and he would have apologized and then whipped your ass again!