(Image via iStock)
America’s least valuable renewable resource is school resource officers. At some point, we — as a nation — apparently agreed school disciplinary issues should be turned over to law enforcement officers. To be sure, this decision was made without our input, for the most part. Most people agree it’s ridiculous to turn rote violations of school policy over to men and women trained in the apprehension and investigation of actual, real crimes like homicide, drug distribution, and any number of day-to-day activities carried out while black.
What have we received in return for being forced to part with our souls in exchange for the rare occasions where serious criminal acts occur on school grounds? An endless supply of outrage and disgust, which is the renewable resource no one asked for. What is our take-home from this involuntary exchange?
I don’t know.
Do you love a parade? Because this is one of the most horrible:
The saga continues. Schools are giving police the power to arrest students for doing things that used to be handled with in-school suspensions, direct conversations with parents, and other school disciplinary processes.
It’s not getting better/
It’s not getting better, man/
It’s just getting old.
Kaia Rolle was sitting, listening to a school employee read her a story when two officers came in the room to arrest her.
“What are those for?” the 6-year-old girl asked the Orlando police officers.
“They’re for you,” Officer Dennis Turner said about the zip ties, before another officer tightened them around her wrists. Kaia immediately began weeping.
CUT TO: Officer Dennis Turner lifts his “Children’s Tears” mug to the camera, owning every lib in sight. School employees stand by idly, watching this six-year-old criminal being slung into the back seat Officer Turner’s cruiser and into the wheels of justice.
Sickeningly, Officer Turner is pretty OK with arresting kids. It’s all part of the job.
He told them he had arrested 6,000 people in his career — the youngest, to that point, was 7. When school employees told him Kaia was 6, not 8 like he thought, he did not seem concerned.
“Now she has broken the record,” he said.
May God have mercy on his soul. I mean, that’s what someone far more charitable than me would say. I’m more aligned with his fellow officers, who were not at all cool with seeing Officer Turner’s personal record being broken.
Orlando police Officer Sergio Ramos called his supervisor from Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy in September, to express his concerns after placing 6-year-old Kaia Rolle the back of his patrol SUV, where she sat with hands bound behind her back in zip ties.
“Sarge this girl is tiny,” he told Sgt. Douglas Andreacchi. “She looks like a baby.”
Two officers tried to prevent this student from being arrested. The only “crime” alleged was throwing a tantrum and hitting a teacher. For that, Officer Turner cuffed her and booked her. There’s some good news, though. The six-year-old is no longer facing criminal charges. (Dear god, the fact that that sentence even needs to be written…). And Turner is out of a job.
Turner was fired shortly after the arrest for not getting the approval of a watch commander to arrest someone younger than 12.
But that good news is tempered by Turner’s own statements, where he declared he had arrested students as young as seven, which would have broken the same rules that got him fired for this arrest. That means his employer — the Orlando PD — doesn’t act to enforce its own rules unless an arrest generates headlines all over the nation.
Meanwhile, in Dekalb County, Georgia, police “misidentified” an 11-year-old black girl as a grand theft auto suspect. Cops cuffed her and repeatedly ignored her mother’s offer of proof that her daughter had been home all night, rather than out trying to steal cars.
And here’s where home surveillance product purveyor Ring comes in. Cops seem to love Ring cameras and their footage… but apparently only when the footage gives them permission to do the things they wanted to do all along.
[Cynthia] Hendricks not only explained to the officers that her daughter couldn’t have been involved because she’d been home since 4 pm, she even provided the officers with video evidence from her Ring doorbell and other motion cameras from around the house as proof that London had entered the house and hadn’t left at the time of the alleged car theft attempt.For whatever reason, the proof Hendricks provided failed to dissuade the officers from handcuffing and detaining her daughter.
The cops only let her go after finding out she was only 11, instead of 16 like the suspect they were actually looking for.
Why kids?
Counterpoint: why not?
They’re smaller, easier to intimidate, and far less likely to put up resistance. Any statements made by parents and legal guardians are easier to discount because any parent would say anything to save their child.
Cops like these ones are sloppy cowards who can’t be bothered to get facts straight or access any deeply-buried well of common sense/restraint. A criminal is a criminal, even if the criminal is six and is getting arrested for doing things six-year-olds do… like throw tantrums.
When you hand over students to cops, you cannot stand by and pretend to be shocked when they treat every rule violation like a criminal violation. If you don’t want to see six-year-olds cuffed by cops, the solution is simple: DON’T CALL THE COPS. There’s plenty of blame to spread around here, but a lot of it lies with the enablers of our society who feel parents are just co-conspirators in a massive underage criminal conspiracy. As for the second story, it’s only the worst cops who ignore evidence that doesn’t match their preconceptions. And there are far too many “worst cops” working the streets.
Arrests R Us: Six-Year-Old Cuffed And Tossed Into A Cop Car For ‘Throwing A Tantrum’ At School
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