A 6-year-old who threw a tantrum at her US school was taken away in
handcuffs, firing up a debate over whether teachers and police are
overreacting with disruptive students.
Salecia Johnson’s family lashed out Tuesday over her treatment and
said she was badly shaken, while the school system and the police
defended their handling of the incident.
Civil rights advocates and criminal justice experts say frustrated
teachers and principals across the country are calling in the police to
deal with even relatively minor disruptions.
Some juvenile authorities say they believe it is happening more
often, driven in part by an increased police presence at schools over
the past two decades because of tragedies like the Columbine school
massacre. But numbers are hard to come by.
“Kids are being arrested for being kids,” said Shannon Kennedy, a
civil rights attorney who is suing the Albuquerque, New Mexico, school
district, where hundreds of kids have been arrested in the past few
years for minor offenses. Those include having cellphones in class,
burping, refusing to switch seats and destroying a history book. In
2010, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for inflating a condom in class.
Salecia was accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing
books and toys in an outburst Friday at her school in Georgia. Police
said she also threw a small shelf that struck the principal in the leg,
jumped on a paper shredder and tried to break a glass frame.
Police refused to say what set off the tantrum. The school called
police, and when an officer tried to calm the child in the principal’s
office, she resisted, authorities said. She was handcuffed and taken
away in a patrol car.
Baldwin County schools Superintendent Geneva Braziel called the
student’s behavior “violent and disruptive” and said the girl was taken
away out of safety concerns for others.
Interim Police Chief Dray Swicord said the department’s policy is to
handcuff people when they are taken to the police station, regardless
of their age, “for the safety of themselves as well as the officer.”
He said the girl will not be charged with a crime because she is too young.
The girl’s aunt, Candace Ruff, went with the child’s mother to pick
her up at the police station. She said Salecia complained about the
handcuffs. “She said they were really tight. She said they really hurt
her wrists,” Ruff said. “She was so shaken up.”
The girl was suspended and can’t return to school until August, her mother, Constance Ruff, told WMAZ-TV.
“I have had some concern for a while that the schools have relied a
little too heavily on police officers to handle disciplinary problems,”
said Darrel Stephens, a former Charlotte, North Carolina, police chief
and executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
Some civil rights advocates, educators and law enforcement officials
are concerned that officers are operating without special training, and
that overwhelmed teachers are unaware that calling in the police could
also result in serious criminal charges.
In Albuquerque, Annette Montano said her 13-year-old son was arrested last year after burping in gym class.
Albuquerque school officials have declined to comment on the arrests
there. But Ellen Bernstein, president of the Albuquerque teachers
union, said students’ bad behavior is more extreme these days.
From sexual harassment to children throwing furniture, “there is
more chronic and extreme disrespect, disinterest and kids who basically
don’t care,” she said.
In Texas, a December report from the nonprofit Texas Appleseed, a
public interest group, says more than 275,000 non-traffic tickets are
issued to juveniles each year. While it is unclear how many are written
at school, the group says the vast majority are for offenses most
commonly linked to school-related misbehavior such as disruption of
class, disorderly conduct and disruption of transportation,
In Florida, a bill was proposed this year to restrict police from
arresting youngsters for misdemeanors or other acts that do not pose
serious safety threats.
“If you are afraid of someone because they bring a gun or drugs, of
course we come down hard,” said Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, who
wants to eliminate the student ticketing. “It’s the kids that just make
you mad that you don’t need to make a crime.”