Six year old arrested at School

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I didnt think a child that young could be charged with a crime? I thought before age 7 they werent thought to be able to have the ability to reason or something...its some legalese I am picking from the recesses of my mind.

Good lord...all reason has gone out of this world!
 

Karen & Crew

New Member
Sounds to me like a whole bunch of people need to be fired. There was a child like this in my difficult child's kindergarten class and he physically attacked and injured the teacher. Somehow they managed to remove him from the class and get him in a safe place without having to call the police and lead him in handcuffs from the school.

How terribly sad for that little girl.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
The case will be thrown out. It's possible they were trying to set an example.
I, too, was under the impression that you couldn't charge a 6-yr-old with-a felony.
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The state attorney's office will decide whether to prosecute or drop the charges.
</div></div>

Why do you want the school staff fired? It sounds to me like it is the district attorney's office that charged her with a felony.

As I read it, all the school staff did was call the police for help with a violent child who had physically attacked a teacher and was putting the other students in danger by throwing chairs.

If you were the parent of a child in that class that was hit in the head with a chair (and although it didn't happen here, it was a definite possibility), you would be screaming that the school staff didn't do enough.

There was a thread recently with a lot of posters support that said that the school should not be allowed to physically restrain children.

So what would you have wanted them to do? People would be criticizing the school staff no matter how they had handled it. They can't win.

~Kathy
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
I didn't click on the site because I'm sure it's in dear old Florida again. Yeppers, the youngest I have seen was 5 and they
had the kids name etc in the papers. We are warm and fuzzy!
Not! DDD
 

kris

New Member
<span style='font-size: 14pt'> <span style='font-family: Georgia'> <span style="color: #993399"> no individual can press felony charges. that is the sole decision of the county prosecutor. i was thinking much what kathy was...staff followed procedure by calling in the police. the information then gets channeled to the DA.

i suspect the charges will be dropped but that the prosecutor will request/insist that a psychiatric evaluation be done & a complete investigation done to find out what really happened.

i feel badly that such a young child was arrested. in our county the child would have gone to the assessment center where an evaluation would have been started. each county in florida handles these things differently.

kris
</span> </span> </span>
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
As Kris said, each county in Florida handles things differently.
This happened in OUR county. Hmmm....I still get teary when I
remember easy child/difficult child having his picture, address & name in the paper
at 14 for his first misdemeanor. Reputations are destroyed and
children are political pawns. Sad. DDD
 

SunnyFlorida

Active Member
If I recall correctly, this child could not be taken to an assessment center because there was none.

I thought I heard last night that the charges were dropped. Maybe not...but I thought the 11pm news said so.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
I don't see where the school staff are at fault in this situation.

Maybe, just maybe it will force people to see that there needs to be an assessment center in place.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
You know what is really sad? That in this day and age we need the police to come help in this situation. What really needs to be put in place in this country are crisis teams that can be called out for situations such as this. People who are trained in mental health situations that can help instead of the police.

You wouldnt send a police officer for a heart attack, why send a police officer for a mentally ill person? We need people who are trained in handling mentally ill people. Maybe crisis teams comprised of psychiatric techs.
 

KFld

New Member
I work in an outpatient mental health facility, so I know there are teams in place for crisis like this in my area, but I don't know what the story was there. I think she should have been restrained and hospitalized, not arrested. I can't see what good an arrest will do for a 6 year old.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
I remember reading that centuries ago in Britain animals were sometimes put on trial. A cow that had broken into a neighbouring farmer's fields would be charged with breaking and entering, plus theft. A bull which gored a person could be charged, found guilty and sentenced to death.

It sounds about as rational as this.

I wrote recently in Watercooler about how cultural differences are the biggest differences between us, not race. I simply can't understand how any system could allow this. But that's because we don't have anything like that in Australia. A child as unruly as that - difficult child 3 has been that bad, only a few years ago (a few weeks before I pulled him out of mainstream). They didn't call the police - they would have done nothing. Instead, they removed the other kids from the room and called his teacher to talk him down from his rage. if he hadn't calmed down they would have called the school counsellor who would simply have watched and waited until it was safe to go in. Ignoring it, leaving him in isolation, was the best thing they could have done. later, once he is no longer raging, is the time to deal with it. As it happened with difficult child 3, "later" also told the class teacher WHY the problem had occurred. Although difficult child 3 shouldn't have raged, it had been triggered by another teacher badly mishandling a situation.

If a six year old can be charged with assault for hitting an adult, at what age do we continue this? Many two year olds hit their parents in rage - maybe if we charged them it would provide a deterrent. Because clearly, abusive two year olds are a big problem, it does happen a lot. Maybe it's our failure to deal with them to the full extent of the law that is the reason for so much violence from toddlers and two year olds.
But then, why wait until they're two? I was breastfeeding my six-month-old easy child when she bit me on the nipple. Now THAT is assault, should I have had her charged? Using the logic clearly in the mind of the DA in this case, it would follow. Then there was the time she bit me on the finger, repeatedly, when I was trying to feed her a pear... she laughed that time, too, it really was deliberate.

I'll leave it now before I say something REALLY rash.

Marg
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I so agree with Janet. If that's the school policy for a child, then in my opinion it's just wrong. I like how they handled it in Australia. This little kid does NOT need to be in the papers, poor thing. I wonder if there's some racial issues behind it too, but, either way, I think it's disgraceful. If a child is in trouble at school, there are Special Education classrooms for those kids. If she never acted up before, for God sakes, she's SIX, give the kid a BREAK. This gets me sick. I'm glad my kids don't go to school in Florida.
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Marg,

You are seriously comparing a six-month old infant with a raging six year old who is throwing chairs?

Are you suggesting that a raging six-year-old can't hurt an adult? Tell that Lothlorien who was hurt during one of Missy's recent rages.

And for your suggestions that the other children be removed from the classroom and the teacher should calm down the child? What about the other childrens' right to learn and the teacher was the one that the child attacked.

Also, you are right that there must be cultural differences between the U.S. and Australia and it shows in your suggestion to leave the child alone raging in the classroom. I guess you are not familiar with the American legal system because doing what you suggest would guarantee a law suit if the child managed to hurt herself while raging.

I agree with those that say that there should be trained crisis teams that could be called in a situation like this. Or that the police should have trained officers to deal with situations like this.

But at this point, the school officials followed protocol and did what they had to do. After that, it was out of their hands.

Oh, one more thing, please remember that you are hearing one side of the story here. The school can't tell you anything due to confidentiality issues while the parent can get on the television and say anything they want ~ true or not.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that a perfectly well-behaved child with no mental health issues would suddenly fly into that kind of a rage.

~Kathy
 

kris

New Member
<span style='font-size: 14pt'> <span style='font-family: Georgia'> <span style="color: #663366"> why does everyone think that calling the police was the first option taken. the school personnel are not allowed to talk about what they did to address the situation. do we know that the teacher didn't try to calm her, that the guidance counselor (if one was available ~~~ they are often shared between schools with-in the district) wasn't called in & was unable to calm the child. in most florida schools there is a resource officer on campus. the decision would have been his/her to call for backup. oh & do we all really believe the mother's claim that this was the first incident the child had displayed this kind of behavoir either at home or at school? we didn't extend that kind of understanding to the mother mentioned in the other incident earlier this week. how do we know it wasn't the mother who brought the media into the situation??

i'm not pointing fingers here....i'm just saying WE DON'T KNOW THE FULL STORY!

at the schools my kids attend(ed) the resource office responded to EVERY report of violence. i suspect that if the RO was available the decision was his/hers.

do i think a trip to the hospital would have been far more appropriate, but who knows, maybe mom refused that option.

again, we don't know what happened. for every senario we can come up with-others can come up with-five more.

kris
</span> </span> </span>
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
They could not reach the Mom. They tried. The school had an ESE
teacher try to intervene with-o success. There was a delay and then
they called the police.

I have no problem with the above info. It's sad that it got to
that point.

BUT....anyone that supports taking a six year old to the jail,
doing a mug shot (on the front page of todays paper, by the way), taking
prints and pressing multiple charges is not on the same wave length I am regarding child advocacy. We do have two hospitals.
We do have one mental health therapy clinic that specializes in
children. Someone in this county has to have crisis intervention
training as they respond to suicide calls and hostage calls.

Do I think the Mom is blowing up the situation for personal gain?
I'd say probably. BUT regardless of the Mother or the school or
the cops........a small child should not be treated like that.
Period. DDD
 
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