Isn’t there a minimum age for juvenile delinquency?
Third-grader arrested for disorderly conduct
Espanola school councilors have an effective tool to use when browbeating 8 year-old children into submission - the cops.
The boy’s mother, Angelica Esquibel, said he was sent to the school office Thursday when he raised his voice to a teacher after hitting another child with the basketball.
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The counselor told him officers would handcuff him and put him in a cell “until he changes his attitude,” Esquibel said.
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Two officers tried to tell Jerry to go back to class and told him he had a choice � class or jail, Esquibel said. When the boy got upset and loud, they handcuffed him, she said.The police report says Jerry was arrested, taken to jail, booked and released to his parents.
Angelica says that when she got to the jail Jerry was standing against a wall crying. He was in a cell with a metal toilet and sink and was being harassed by adult prisoners in other cells. Police had told him that if he didn’t stop crying they would let the inmates into his cell.
The official reason for his arrest according to the juvenile citation was that he “got out of control and refused to go back to class”. Apparently that is a crime in New Mexico.
Police Chief Richard Guillen, who was not at work Thursday, said he had few details but that officers “couldn’t deal with” the boy before taking him into custody.
He said he had conflicting accounts of where the boy was held and for how long.
Wrong answer, Chief. That is a typical distraction/avoidance maneuver. The main issue is not where and how long the boy was held. The problem is that an 8 year-old was arrested for crying.
(Tip credit to Richard Emerson)
OK that’s just wrong. I hope his mom’s planning on suing. In my day, school officials had to deal with us without calling the cops.
OK… this is wrong. Stupid cops — stupid school administrators.
But perhaps we are not getting the whole picture here. Kids have changed. “In my day….” Well, it is not “in your day”. Times have changed. Kids get violent much more these days — attacking adults, and other children with chilling violence. We have even had kids at the high school level attack cops in the Dean’s office! Needless to say, the kid was on the floor and in handcuffs quickly. The most worrisome part is that we now have primary kids exhibiting this violence.
Still…… it seems to me that this could have been handled in a better way.
barry
The wonderful thing about zero tolerance as far as school officials are concerned is that they don’t have to use any judgment whatsoever in the course of a school day when they deal with incidents such as this one.
Which makes one ask the question Why are these people being paid big bucks? The school board can hire a clerical worker who can assess a situation and call the cops.
Why didn’t they just ask the mother to take the kid home until he calmed down? That makes too much sense?
Now they are going to get sued up the wazoo and the taxpayer is going to pay for it.
All these clowns get is a little bad publicity.
New motto for public school students:
GO TO SCHOOL, BECOME A CRIMINAL.
Zero tolerance is the result of accusations of discrimination. If the statistics of suspensions and expulsions show that 28% of the students are African American, but 57% of the suspensions and explulsions (pretty close the the actual numbers in our school district) are African American, zero tolerance is inviting. Kids whose parents are involved often find ways to keep their students in school where parents who are not as involved, often because of long hours at work and lack of knowledge don’t keep their kids in school. So the statistics show discrimination. Actually, this is not the school district’s fault. But they adopt a zero tolerance approach to get the Office of Civil Rights off their backs. Too bad we can’t treat each case as an individual case.
barry
Just out of curiousity, how long before we condition all our children to run away, cry, and scream when they see a police officer?
Jim,
Here is some information for New Mexico.
http://www.conwaygreene.com/nmsu/lpext.dll?f=templates&fn=main-hit-h.htm&2.0
In this state the legislators meet twice a year. Go figure. Now we know why, changes in law get passed, with out a second thought, on how it will be used.
It appears they charged this child with this. Which is really for Adults. I am still checking Espanol hand book.
30-20-1. Disorderly conduct.
Disorderly conduct consists of:
A. engaging in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud or otherwise disorderly conduct which tends to disturb the peace; or
B. maliciously disturbing, threatening or, in an insolent manner, intentionally touching any house occupied by any person.
Whoever commits disorderly conduct is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.
What child, could not be charged with this, at some point?
Excuse me, but positive behavior methods, need to be used FIRST. Before the cops are ever called.
Section 22. 5-4. 3 School discipline policies
state that Guidance and discipline should be reasonable, consistent and follow written policies.
I do not consider sending a eight year old to jail, in order to change his attitude reasonable. It is excessive and cruel. This practice needs to be stopped.
I urge all of you, to send letter to New Mexico Education committee. I think they need some common sense input.
http://legis.state.nm.us/newsite/committeedetail.asp?CommCode=HHS
I do believe, this policy will fall under the health committee. We should not be causing unnecessary stress on children.
They could have called Mom, to pick up child. When he calmed down, then a punishment could have been worked out.
This district needs training in child behavior. They made the situation worse, by threatening this child.
Brenda
Well, they managed to traumatize another child, probably for life. Are the police in NM such ‘girlie men’ that they have to _handcuff_ an 8-yr old? What do they do to an adult, TAZER him?
“Just out of curiousity, how long before we condition all our children to run away, cry, and scream when they see a police officer?”
How long before we condition all our children to run away, cry, and scream when they see a school administrator, teacher, or even the sight of a public school?
Oh, and Alan, there have been incidents in FL where school rent-a-cops have tazered middle- school students with the blessings of the school administration.
And school officials wonder why homeschooling is such an attractive option for an ever-growing number of parents.
And we wonder why most people, including especially lawyers, don’t trust cops. Well, duh!
I think that cops and school administrators really overreact!!!! I live in the state of texas and my son got cited for disorderly conduct for having a verbal altercation with another student. Now im facing to go to court and is causing a great deal of stress on me and son!! Cops should concentrate on more serious offenses like rapists, murderers, etc. school adm. are just finding an easy way out to not deal with these kids. The system really sucks!!!!!!!!!!