This is from Bob Herbert of the New York Times.
When 6-year-old Desre’e Watson threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class a couple of weeks ago she could not have known that the full force of the law would be brought down on her and that she would be carted off by the police as a felon.
“The student became violent,” said Frank Mercurio, the no-nonsense chief of the Avon Park police. “She was yelling, screaming — just being uncontrollable. Defiant.”
“But she was 6,” I said.
The chief’s reply came faster than a speeding bullet: “Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we’ve arrested?”
After 20 minutes of this “uncontrollable” behavior, the police were called in. At the sight of the two officers, Chief Mercurio said, Desre’e “tried to take flight.”
The chief explained: “You can’t handcuff them on their wrists because their wrists are too small, so you have to handcuff them up by their biceps.”
The State of . . . our children is dire. Apparently, this is part of a trend going around with some school districts that are calling in the cops for the most trivial of transgressions. This criminalizes the behavior of a disproportionate number of young black children. We all know what happens to a child once they’ve entered the system: it’s all down hill from there. People may wonder why I (rich) don’t want to live in small towns and those cookie cutter suburbs. This is a reason: Many are too quick to write off a black child as monstrous.
Filed under: Race
