December 16, 2006

• not sure about this. Not enough information about the video, over a year old, and the "cop watch" link wants a LOT of personal information...and looks like a way for folks to bash the local police. and, the inside link, related how..? This post confuses me... and doesn't smell all that nice.
• CBS news article here.
• I read that one... "Interview requests by The Early Show were denied by both St. Petersburg police and school officials."... a very one sided report. This FPP could have used a link to a follow up story that presented both sides. Not that I'm saying this would ever be justified, just that it is pretty incomplete and feels a bit like a personal agenda as regards police...
• They may have been using some sort of "tough love" method to scare her away from acting out. But, the child looked so agitated, even before they arrested her that "calmed down" isn't the word I would have used. Does anyone know of any follow-up articles?
• not sure about this. Not enough information about the video, over a year old, and the "cop watch" link wants a LOT of personal information...and looks like a way for folks to bash the local police. Yeah, because it's conceivable that the cops had a good reason to arrest the five-year old. This FPP could have used a link to a follow up story that presented both sides. Can you even make-up something for the other side that would need presenting? feels a bit like a personal agenda as regards police... Ironic. You seem to have more of an agenda than the OP. But hey, cops always gotta stick together, no matter how blatantly in the wrong they are, right?
• life as a shorty shouldn't be so rough.
• They may have been using some sort of "tough love" method to scare her away from acting out. I used to be all for this method of scaring an older kid who is acting up and looking like getting worse, but a) a five-year-old? and b) a 17-year-old boy was recently murdered in a prisoner transport van here in NZ after his parents had the police arrest him as a scare tactic. It was a terrible mistake on the part of the prison administration, but that one event has put me right off the idea. There was also a post on Mefi in the last week about a woman who got her 12-year-old arrested for theft after he opened his Christmas present (a Gameboy?) early. /hasn't looked at the video in the post
• Knickerbocker... I'm not a cop. And I have no agenda other than making sure my opinions are formed based on ALL the information about an event, not just one side of it. And, I thought I stated clearly that I would have a hard time finding a reason for this kind of behavior on the part of the police. There are, however, a lot of issues we haven't touched on here. As someone who works with kids every day that are prone to act out violently, I'm very aware of the liability I face if I so much as touch a child. I'm sure the police are also aware of this. Was the child safer in handcuffs than being physically restrained, probably, was the child dangerous to herself and possibly others, very likely. Something had to be done, and we, with the information we have, are not in a position to state that this was the wrong course. My original comment stands, we don't have enough info about this and I feel to indict anyone (the police, the school, the parent, the kid) is wrong.
• There's a lengthy comment under the video that says that the little girl was being pretty violent, hitting the school principal, pulling things off the walls and throwing them, and jumping up and down on the table. School administrators are not generally allowed to physically restrain or punish students in any way, these days (in most locations -- there are still some "spanking schools"). I'm not saying that what these cops did was right at all -- I guess I'm just looking for more context, like HB.
• So that's what The Blob is doing these days. I mean other than consuming everything in it's path and growing and growing, working as an attorney. Cool.
• She's five years old. I'm sure most parents would love to put handcuffs on their 5-year-old when s/he's acting out, because kids are impossible to deal with at that age, but most parents wouldn't do such a thing because they understand that 5-year-olds are the way they are. I understand the need to see the full picture, because too often we see things taken out of context and people made to look stupid/evil/incompetent, but I just can't imagine what would prompt 3 policemen in uniform to crowd around 1 five-year-old girl and proceed to "wrangle" her while she's wailing. And using armed law enforcement as an aid to raising your child just makes everyone involved look incompetent at best.
• This is just wrong. I mean, where's the taser in all this?? I kid.. this really is pretty messed up.
• I agree that we don't have enough info to draw definitive conclusions, but it sounds to me like this was more than just a case of a five-year-old "being the way five-year-olds are." If it had gotten to the point where the child was punching the principal, obviously SOME kind of immediate intervention/restraint was necessary. Since the parent couldn't get there right away, I'm not sure who else could have been enlisted to intervene. One of my newer coworkers just came from a job as a teacher in a residential school for troubled children. They were all extensively trained in safe restraint techniques, but he says that even then it wasn't always enough. In a regular public school, I can certainly imagine situations in which the school personnel just aren't equipped to handle a violent situation safely on their own. The school may have to settle a lawsuit now, but I'd bet it's nothing compared to the lawsuit they'd have had to settle if they had tried to restrain the child themselves without knowing how, and injured her.
• HuronBob, I'm sorry. I thought you were a retired cop. Maybe I have you mixed up with someone else. I apologize. The cop tells the little girl something like "Remember me telling your mom that I think we should handcuff you?" I don't know how anyone can reach the conclusion that the parents weren't there from that. It also sounds like the parents didn't agree, and the cops were trying to convince the parents to let them do it. I still challenge anyone to just be able to make up a situation where what we saw in the video would be justified. I can't. Like for example, let's pretend the she was "punching" the principal. Let's pretend she can throw a better punch than any other five-year old in history. I still can't imagine that it would take three cops to stop her. I know I could simply and safely stop a five-year old from hitting me, and I can't imagine that a trained child worker with the years of experience that the principal needs to have to become a principal would have any more difficult of a time. And even going so far to pretend she was bad-ass enough to take me out and was standing over my unconscious body, I can't imagine a trained cop would need two other cops to help him restrain her safely. In fact, no matter what, three cops is always going to be worse. That's going to have caused some permanent damage to her in ways that'll keep showing up the rest of her life. And even pretending she was bad ass enough to be able to take out three cops and a principal, she obviously didn't need restraining at the time that they did. What, were they protecting that chair from being sat in? That wasn't restraining her, that was a demonstration to her, a show of power.
• Well, I can't peak for everyone, but the reason I reached the conclusion that the parent douldn't get there right away was because the article said so. Ditto for punching the principal. I've seen videos of children in rages where they hurt both adults AND themselves. Just because she was sitting still at the beginning of the video, we don't know what was going on before then.
• Longer article here and here. And apparently this wasn't a regular 911 call, but the Pinellas County Schools contract with the county sherriffs for just this sort of thing.
• Just because she was sitting still at the beginning of the video, we don't know what was going on before then. But we now what was going when they did "restrain" her. At that point in time, its blatant that she needed no restraining. If she needed it earlier, they should've of done then. The contract helps explain things. When there is a contract involved, the cops have to be over-aggressive, so that the contract becomes justified. TUM, you linked to the same article 4 times. Reading that one, it does seem like the assist-principal did handle things alright. Maybe not the best way, but still. The two cops that were in training I can't really fault too much, either. I mean, I still expect them too realize it was wrong, but it's really fucking hard to challenge what's going on when you are just in-training. The cops who were doing the training are even more fucked up, though. It wasn't just a demonstration for the girl, but a demonstration to the cops in training. Well, at least the girl has learned a valuable lesson about cops and about authority in general.
• Don't you people watch those Home Video shows? G'wan. I dare ya to step up and take one in the 'nads from a five year old.
• Srry 'bout the multiple links - must've been a cut and paste error. THe one article described how the girl only stopped tearing around when the police came into the room. Clearly she needed to be removed from school. Who else was going to do it?
• Wasn't this all over the net like a year and a half ago......
• I am the eggman. ". . .no one can yet say for certain what kind of noises monkeys would make if collided at those high speeds."