Tuesday, April 10, 2007

'I Beg Your Pardon?' Department

Police arrested a 6-year-old Florida girl and even handcuffed her when she acted out in class. Police officers said Desre'e Watson, a kindergarten student at Avon Elementary School in Highlands County, had a violent run-in with a teacher on Thursday.

"I was scared," the little girl said.

Police claim the little girl got angry and began kicking and scratching. She even hit a teacher attempting to intervene in the disturbance.
...
The kindergartner was booked in the Highland County jail and was charged with a felony and two misdemeanors.

Via Fetch Me My Axe.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ten bucks this kid is already on some sort of medication that she doesn't need.

Chris - this is not a stab at folks who need meds, but when you give kids drugs they don't need as a means to chemically restrain them, things like this happen. Those fellas at Columbine? You got it, drugged to the gills. The lady who drowned her kids here in Houston in the bathtub? Drugged to the gills.

The reason we did not have as many kids shooting up schools when we were younger is not because there were less guns - because there were plenty of guns - there weren't all these doctors and teachers handing out speed and SSRI's like M&M's.

mitzibel said...

Either doped to the gills, or suffering from a debilitating lack of Hand-to-Ass therapy in her formative years. Probably both. I don't condone beating children, but I also don't think it's abusive to smack their behinds to get their attention.

She was scared? Good. It sounds like her major problem is a lack of healthy fear/respect for authority.

Pretty Lady said...

What is UP with you people?

A SIX YEAR OLD GIRL had a TANTRUM in school. A SIX YEAR OLD GIRL.

The school called the POLICE.

There are no drugs on earth that would make a SIX YEAR OLD GIRL, UNARMED, dangerous enough to require police handling.

Did you click on the link? Did you watch the VIDEO of this six-year-old girl playing on the slide and on the merry-go-round? She didn't look out-of-control or drugged up to me. She looked like a six-year-old girl, playing.

Her mother didn't look like a terrible, indulgent, drug-addicted or negligent mother, either. She looked like a nice, healthy person who was furious that her daughter's schoolteacher had so few resources to cope with a tantrum that she CALLED THE FRICKIN' POLICE.

This is RIDICULOUS. I have no understanding whatsoever of why anyone would want to blame someone other than an absurdly stupid public school system for this travesty.

Anonymous said...

"her daughter's schoolteacher had so few resources to cope with a tantrum"

What "resources" does a schoolteacher have nowadays to deal with a child in the middle of a screaming, kicking, scratching, and hitting tantrum?

When I was in kindergarten, Sister Mary Elizabeth would have slapped me out of my chair, dragged me down to Sister Cyrilla's office, who would have promptly swatted my ass with her magic paddle, scheduled me for detention, and sent a note home with me declaring my obvious Satanist tendencies, to be signed by my parents before I was allowed back in school.

And that was kindergarten.

Anonymous said...

It's very simple.

Lawsuit. This has lawsuit written all over it. If the teacher lays so much as a finger on the child then the teacher AND the school district gets sued into oblivion.

There is nothing teachers can do to control the kids. All the things that worked in the past, the detentions, the spankings, all that is totally out the window these days.

There is absolutely no motivation for these children to behave, which is why the teachers and parents drug the kids into submission. You can't spank little Timmy, it might fuck with his self esteem. You can't put him in the corner, or yell at him, or make him sit in a chair during recess, it MIGHT FUCK WITH HIS SELF-ESTEEM!

The teachers and principals can and will be sued if Timmy's self-esteem is somehow harmed or he suffers the humiliation of a punishment. So did the teacher overreact? No, not really. It's not like she could do anything to this child to make her calm down, so she did what any bureaucrat would do in this situation, pawn the situation off on a higher power.

What could have been done differently? You can't talk reasonably to a six-year old when they are having a tantrum. They are not open to reason, or logic, or appeals to their better nature. You certainly can't remove her from the room, or place her somewhere where she could act out without disrupting everyone else because that would involve touching her, and see above for those consequences.

Do I think it's excessive to handcuff a six-year old? Yes. Do I understand why they did it? Absolutely. There was no other legal course of action, they called the only people who do are still legally protected in handling out-of-control citizens, the cops. It's not that they feared for their lives, they feared for their jobs, and their homes and their families.

Look to the lawyers and the asshole parents if you want to blame someone.

Anonymous said...

I have had some time to reflect on my comment above, and I would like to add a little in a much calmer tone.

Unlike the crew over at Vox's, I am not even remotely in favor of crucifying all the teachers, burning all the schools and sowing the ground with salt where they once stood. I sympathize for *some* teachers, since I know that they really are trying.

I do believe that there is an agenda to dumb down the population through the schools among other things, but I don't believe that every single teacher is part of a vast conspiracy to turn all schoolkids into empty-headed fools that love Big Brother.

That said, I am dismayed by some of the parents who have either been intimidated or brainwashed into believing that spanking a child constitutes abuse and is legally actionable.

I could pontificate on this for a while, but I will simply say compare the average behavior of teenagers in the late 70's and early 80's to the behavior displayed in today's classrooms. Those children did not have metal detectors to pass through on their way into the buildings. Today's kids face that, and worse every single day. Blaming the teachers is an easy cop-out -- no one wants to point the finger at the kids themselves or heaven forbid, the parents. The teachers are under physical assault from the students, and legal assault from greedy attorneys.

I don't have a solution outside of encouraging parenting and tort reform, but neither of these are terribly popular so things probably won't change. However, I think that the truth is that the kids aren't all right, at least not anymore and we have to stop blinding ourselves to that fact.

thimscool said...

At least they didn't use a taser.

thimscool said...

Mitzibel,

Having seen a number of your posts in these parts, I was amused by your comment about respect for authority.

mitzibel said...

Yeah, I talk a big show, but I don't have a record ;) And besides, much of what I talk about was in the Long Long Ago.

Also---what Crom said.

belledame222 said...


This is RIDICULOUS. I have no understanding whatsoever of why anyone would want to blame someone other than an absurdly stupid public school system for this travesty.


Thank you.

And it's exactly that sort of attitude that allows for this sort of bullshit in the first place. and oh yeah: racism: the kid was black; this happened at exactly the same time a fourteen year old was being released early--after lots of protest--from her SEVEN YEAR sentence for -pushing- (without any resultant injury, and allegedly after she'd raised a hand to her first) a hall monitor. Shaquanda Cotton. not before her dad died without her ever getting to see him again or even go to his funeral, though.

and excuse me very much, but "hand to ass" does not HELP in situations like this; and neither does blaming fucking psych drugs, which by the way? saved my ass, personally.

but this is crap. it's not the KIDS that are the problem here. it's bloody adults not taking responsibility, bringing in and blaming everyone in the goddam world including little kids for behaving--like kids. the POLICE. sweet christ on a cracker. what PL said: what IS it with you people?

belledame222 said...

and no, actually, those "fellas" at Columbine were not drugged to the gills, except with homicidal rage. and the father of one of 'em was pretty durn authoritarian i do believe. i will back that up when my own rage abates somewhat.

Anonymous said...

Belle,

I am glad that drugs saved your life. Even though I don't know you, it's good to hear that someone was helped.

I have listened and participated in the arguments that rage all over the 'Net on various boards and commenting sections in the blogosphere regarding the safety and efficacy of giving psychoreactive drugs to children, and the resultant effects.

I believe that there is a definite link between all these odd homicides, school shootings, baby drownings and the prevalance of SSRI's prescribed for everything from skinned knees to severe bipolar disorders. I believe that the latter are helped by these drugs, and there are a few regulars here who will testify that their lives are improved by them.

However, the evidence is mounting along with the body count that not everyone can safely take these drugs. Google "SSRI related homicide" and see how many articles you get.

Considering that Eric Harris was rejected from serving in the USMC over taking Luvox, it's pretty clear that he can be suspected to be under the influence of the drug when he murdered all those schoolchildren, especially as the autopsy performed showed Luvox in his system.

It's clear from your stance that you cannot be convinced since your own personal experience with psychoreactive drugs was positive that everyone else must have a similar experience when taking them.

As for "authoritarian" parenting, all I can say is count the number of school shootings before we started medicating all the children instead of spanking them, against the numbers of killings done by spanked, non-medicated individuals.

We do agree that the adults should be more responsible, absolutely. However, the reason that this situation escalated into the farce that it was is because the adults are not allowed to behave like adults, for fear of legal consequences. That is the root of the problem, and one that could be solved with good parenting - but parents are terrified to punish their children these days. So instead, they chemically restrain them. I expect to see many more incidents like this one, and I expect them to get quite bloody before anything positive is done.