6 year old hand cuffed

Bells that was as funny as the first time I saw it on the gruen transfer

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and as someone who has worked in a supermarket I can tell you that happens on a daily basis, most of the time you roll your eyes at mum/dad and share a chuckel and then just clean up the mess for them. Kids are kids, they like to embarrass there parents, certainly you don't call the cops

 

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That's boilerplate.

Same reason George Zimmerman was handcuffed.

 

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I do have to agree that school officials have their hands tied in situations like this, because they really can't physically restrain a child for any reason, and such a measure might have been required to move her from the room she was in to perhaps a makeshift "safe room". So if the child's tantrum really is that bad, then I can see needing to get professional assistance. Again, this would never have happened if we didn't sue and fire every teacher who was forced to handle a child for getting out of line.

So in this ultra-PC society, I can, sadly, understand the school's motives. However, the police need to be kicked in the collective groin for this, because there is nothing stopping them from restraining the child until she calmed down. Cuffing her and arresting her is the most absurd thing I've ever heard in my life. She's fucking six years old; there is simply no excuse for that, no matter what the neocon hatemongers in this thread say. "Teachers can't restrain children," does not then become "Cops must arrest children." That's nonsense. That should never even be on the table, but supposing arrest was a reasonable solution to the problem--it would still be the last resort, with a dozen other contingencies before it. Did no one call the parents? Other relatives? Why was the first step taken to arrest the child? I mean, it's a moot argument because that's simply not an option with a six-year-old, but for the sake of argument.

 

I disagree with folks here who think policy forced this outcome. I don't think this is the first case of a violent child outburst and it won't be the last.

I disagree that the school can't take immediate action to protect her from injuring herself, action that would be no different than any other emergency attendance such as a medical emergency. They can be sued for this just as easy as they could be sued for moving her to a safer place. I also think the school should have called an ambulance, not the cops. This was a medical issue, not a law enforcement issue.

I don't think 6-year olds have tantrums. I think that term is reserved for 2 year olds. This child may have been having a severe episode of anxiety or pain or even an episode of mental illness. Suppose she was having behavior-specific seizure. Suppose she was momentarily in the world of an autistic child. Anything is possible. She seems to have been convulsive if she knocked over a bookcase. This was a severe episode and special rules would apply.

Police regulations should prohibit the cuffing of any person less than some featherweight status like 100 lbs. They should have a special unit to dispatch to assist children. It should be a padded van. They should only place her there until the mother arrives.

Paramedics should be trained to respond to violent children. They should have the same setup. Before restraining her, and only as a last ditch effort, they should have tried to sedate her. This was an issue for a medical person to address, not a cop. Only on a doctor's orders should a child be remanded to the police.

By placing charges, she may have a record that will follow her even though no court action follows. The incident is more likely to damage her than to help her, if she does have a recurring problem. The publicity will do no good for the people involved, the school, the police, and the chain of command. The family will be going though a nightmare.

This was the intended result of following policy, to create all this chaos? No. They will either find policy was not followed, or else they will find a flaw in the policy.

One thing is for sure, with publicity the heavy-handed militants will soften their positions.

 

I disagree with folks here who think policy forced this outcome. I don't think this is the first case of a violent child outburst and it won't be the last.

I disagree that the school can't take immediate action to protect her from injuring herself, action that would be no different than any other emergency attendance such as a medical emergency. They can be sued for this just as easy as they could be sued for moving her to a safer place. I also think the school should have called an ambulance, not the cops. This was a medical issue, not a law enforcement issue.

I don't think 6-year olds have tantrums. I think that term is reserved for 2 year olds. This child may have been having a severe episode of anxiety or pain or even an episode of mental illness. Suppose she was having behavior-specific seizure. Suppose she was momentarily in the world of an autistic child. Anything is possible. She seems to have been convulsive if she knocked over a bookcase. This was a severe episode and special rules would apply.

Police regulations should prohibit the cuffing of any person less than some featherweight status like 100 lbs. They should have a special unit to dispatch to assist children. It should be a padded van. They should only place her there until the mother arrives.

Paramedics should be trained to respond to violent children. They should have the same setup. Before restraining her, and only as a last ditch effort, they should have tried to sedate her. This was an issue for a medical person to address, not a cop. Only on a doctor's orders should a child be remanded to the police.

By placing charges, she may have a record that will follow her even though no court action follows. The incident is more likely to damage her than to help her, if she does have a recurring problem. The publicity will do no good for the people involved, the school, the police, and the chain of command. The family will be going though a nightmare.

This was the intended result of following policy, to create all this chaos? No. They will either find policy was not followed, or else they will find a flaw in the policy.

One thing is for sure, with publicity the heavy-handed militants will soften their positions.

 

It's the fear of being sued that brings about this policy (whether it's an actual policy or simply an unwritten practice, I don't know, but the effect is the same), and while I agree that it is flawed, it doesn't mean that policy doesn't dictate the protocol. They should have called the parents or other relatives, they should have called the paramedics, they should have taken her into a safe place where she could not hurt herself or anyone else, but they didn't because they are afraid of lawsuits and did not give enough thought to how to handle such a situation.

 

It's not a paramedics job to deal with a tantrum, the ambulance services are busy enough as it is without adding this stupidity to there workload. If teachers can't deal with this then they shouldn't be teachers, part of the job of a teacher is to be a child care worker ESPECIALLY in the younger age groups and that means dealing with the problems which effect children, my niece can really throw a wobbler when she is tired, it doesn't mean that mum calls the cops when she is looking after her, doesn't mean I call them if she is with me, and it doesn't mean the workers at the child care center call the cops because she is playing up cause she is tired. I mean for Christ sake, mum gets all the tough cases because she is older and had raised 4 kids before she even became a teacher and now she is a highly experienced one, she deals with this sort of behavor on a daily basis and you know how often she has called the cops? Zero times. This is piss poor protocol and piss poor management at every level starting with the teacher in charge

 

Apparently they couldn't contact any of the children's relatives.

That didn't actually occur to much later when the child was already at the police station.

The police did take her to a safe place where she couldn't hurt herself, and put her in a room and got her something to drink.

I'm not sure, in the state she was in, being transported by paramedics, where the restraints would likely have had to have been whole body, would have been a better option. This really wasn't a medical problem.

 

They should have this, and they should have that, a special unit, a padded van ....

Except this was a small town, with a population of just 18,000.

Not every small town, or small school has these facilities you mention.

 

For one, you don't know that. It very well could have been.

Secondly, they did not simply take her to a safe place and give her something to drink. They arrested her, handcuffed her, and charged her with a crime. This is not some trifling detail, much as you seem to want to make it one (or three, rather).

There were countless ways to handle this better than the manner in which it was handled, and I sincerely hope someone ends up paying for this.

 

I keep hearing that there are numerous better ways this could have been handled. But no one has offered any detail about that from the knowing position of actually being there when the problem was going down. Also, no one here knows what the laws are that might be of concern to the teachers involved or what past lawsuits have been won or lost to create the environment that this event happened in.

Someone earlier mentioned kids like to embarrass their parents. But I would say that a little girl throwing a full blown tantrum in front of all her classmates has no concept of the term embarrassment. As a matter of fact I think she is showing a classic pattern of growing up to become a fine upstanding sociopath. I think the debate about whether sociopaths are born that way or are made that way is still out. Personally I'm leaning to born that way. That leaves that question of what's the best way to raise a born sociopath still in limbo. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Everybody has an opinion.

 

Brief Note

The police have stated she was not charged with a crime (see #31); there is some dispute over whether the police put her in a holding cell or not. This whole thing is an absolute mess. I mean, my daughter's elementary school has a properly educated and certified student counselor; I'm guessing that the school in Milledgeville doesn't. Still, though, much along the lines of Bells' point—"if adults can't handle a child having a tantrum, then said adults have no place trying to teach them"—I wonder how it is a community can end up with an elementary school faculty that is unable to deal with children being children.

 

Killjoyklown OMG SERIOUSLY??? She had a temper tantrum so she's a sociopath now??? You people need to GET A GRIP. Oh and BTW the reason that shrinks wont do the test for personality disorders on kids is because they will all show up as positive, kids are MENT to e self centered, kids are MENT to lack empathy because there brain hasn't developed to the point of higher reasoning yet

 

While of course possible, but even well after the event the Mother is not making that claim, and no one there apparently thought it was a medical issue, so why would they treat it that way?

Well wasn't the meeting room at the police station a safe place?
Typically the police have rooms where even grown men can't do any harm to themselves or others and they can watch someone in one of those rooms without having to be in the room with them.

And according to the link Tiassa posted, she was NOT arrested and she was NOT charged with any crime, but she was in fact given something to drink.

http://www.13wmaz.com/news/article/178578/175/Milledgeville-Chief-Defends-Handcuffing

Possibly, but you need to remember that this was in a fairly small town (~18,000 people), they couldn't get in touch with the child's parents, the police say they tried but couldn't calm her down and she was reported to be doing things that put her safety and other's safety at risk, so there may not have been a better way to handle this. The meeting room at the police station may well have been the best location for her to stay at untill her Aunt showed up to collect her because clearly the Principle's office, where she was throwing/beating/jumping on things, wasn't a good place, and no one has pointed out another safe place that was available to them.

 

hand cuffs would do more harm to the child if the tantrum was that bad

 

Well, look, she knocked over bookshelves and actually injured the principal. It was quite a bit more than a temper tantrum. Note that I'm not agreeing with how they handled it, only that they really are limited in what they can do without fear of civil litigation. Should what can get them sued be their primary concern? Perhaps not, but that's a different story.

Thanks, I overlooked that post previously. Okay, so she wasn't charged. But she was still handcuffed and taken to a police station, which is unacceptable.

I would like to hear the rationale from the school. Have they commented yet?

It may not have been a medical issue, but the fact that no one is saying it is doesn't mean it wasn't. It just means that nobody recognized it as such. But if a child is going as apparently batshit crazy as this one was (I've seen temper tantrums, but tearing posters off walls and knocking bookshelves into people like in the movies) is not something I've ever encountered. My first thought would be that this child is perhaps missing a dose of something.

Perhaps, but wouldn't also an empty classroom be a safe place? Would the teacher's lounge not be a safe place? I see no reason why the child needed to be taken to the police station, least of all handcuffed and put in the back of a patrol car.

There are no such places. Even the most spartan room (not including a cell) in a police station is going to feature a table and chair, probably some glass as well. Unless the police station literally has a padded room--which they don't, and certainly not one in such a small town--there is no place where someone is entirely free from harm.

As I said, I missed that post. But she was put in handcuffs and brought to the police station. That's already too much. I have to wonder what kind of sociopath has no issue with a six-year-old being handcuffed for essentially having a fit? Just because there is a loophole that theoretically allows for the handcuffing of a child doesn't mean that such a loophole should be exploited.

The hospital would have been a kinder, more humane, and much more logical solution. I'll even say this: Had they not handcuffed her, this situation would have been less egregious. But even the act of taking her to the police station was a step too far. I've seen kids get into brutal fist fights in 8-foot-wide hallways with fifty students stampeding between classes, and those kids got sent to the principal's office. I see no reason why this should have been different.

 

And like I said, that's possible, but time has gone by and that's not what the Mother has claimed.

Well Teacher lounges often have coffee pots and other things which could be misused and again, this is a small town, we have no idea if they had an empty class room, but even if they did, they aren't really empty.

Sure they do, interrogation rooms are exactly like that, and a meeting room typically only has chairs and a table.

Yeah, well maybe when they wrote the manual they didn't consider this situation, but you can't expect the policemen to ignore procedure.

In any case, that seems to now be the crux of the issue, the short ride to the police station (it was a small town) during which she was handcuffed, because she wasn't arrested, she wasn't charged, she was simply brought to the police station and given something to drink and kept in a meeting room until they could locate a relative to come and get her.

It really is hard to get worked up about that.

 

You know, not one person has even considered how scared that CHILD must have been, taken from an environment she knows when she is already worked up, cuffed which is enough to make even a lot of adults freak out and taken somewhere unfamiliar with strangers all around her. Really great environment to calm a child down.