One of Georgia's most dangerouse criminals arrested.

Vince524 said:

She was throwing a temper tantrum.

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Ugh, throw away the key.

The sad thing is that I bet if you looked through the comments section on the article, there'd probably be a ton of people saying the little brat deserved it.

...IMO, that's just wrong.

Edit:

by the_jesuit April 17, 2012 1:06 PM EDT I think it's the principle of the thing..IF i had been arrested when i was 6 years old i'd remember that all my life and im 49 and still remember things that happened to me when i was 6.

It's called applying the law to all situations. I don't consider it wasting taxpayers money at all.

This lil girl obviously has some issues so maybe this incident will cause further investigation into her home life etc.

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Whatever issues she didn't have I'm sure she will have a lot more if she was traumatized from this. I hope they win a big big lawsuit.

raburrell said:

The sad thing is that I bet if you looked through the comments section on the article, there'd probably be a ton of people saying the little brat deserved it.

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Third comment.

vince's threads: all the news that's fit to print (on the back page of the metro section), just under the obituaries and just above the ad for foot baths.

William Haskins said:

vince's threads: all the news that's fit to print (on the back page of the metro section), just under the obituaries and just above the ad for foot baths.

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I dunno. I think he's illustrating some serious problems with one of the nation's most important institutions. YMMV.

i keep hitting refresh because i am convinced that someone in indiana is about to have a flat tire.

don't leave us hanging, vince!

Vince524 said:

She was throwing a temper tantrum.

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Vince, do you have some commentary or an opinion on this? Or is this the internet equivalent of throwing stale Wonderbread to seagulls?

according to the police report, the girl tore items off the walls and threw furniture. The report also says the girl knocked over a shelf that injured the school principal.

The girl was crying in the principal's office at Creekside Elementary before police arrived. When the officer tried to calm the child, she resisted and was handcuffed.

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Do you have a suggestion of how she should have been handled? Teachers and principals can't touch her, or they're "assaulting a child!" and will go straight to prison, pretty much. So what's that leave? She's destroyed a room, injured the principal, assaulted a police officer and what? Are we to pity her for the trauma of handcuffs? What about the fact that she's traumatized every kid who witnessed it?

What's that sound in the distance? Do I hear strains of the band striking up a rousing version of Blame Her Mother to be followed up with She's Only Six! and an encore of She Probably Has A Disorder?

If she doesn't already have an IEP, she'll have one by the time this is over.

Vince524 said:

I report, you decide.

~~~ Hides under desk~~~

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It was my understanding that we weren't supposed to start threads linking to controversial new stories without some commentary or opinion of our own.

I guess I was absent the day you alone were excused from following that guideline.

I've had to deal with really serious meltdowns when substituting before, and the fact is that when verbal commands don't work, you really can't do anything to stop it except call whoever's in authority above you and step in front of the flying furniture so that you get hit instead of a six-year-old.

I feel like there's bits of information missing, such as when the parents were called and if they were asked to come get their child before it escalated as far as bringing in the police. That's generally what's supposed to happen if behavior is so bad the child must be removed from school.

Vince524 said:

I didn't think I needed to provide much comment beyond the sarcasm, but if you insist, here goes.

I'm against this.

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That's a great start, Vince.

As I asked in a previous post, how would you suggest it should have been handled? Precisely what are the magic words one says to a tantrumming 6-year-old who has destroyed a classroom, injured a teacher and assaulted a police officer?

If you were God, how would this have been handled?

Devil Ledbetter said:

how would you suggest it should have been handled? Precisely what are the magic words one says to a tantrumming 6-year-old

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There are no magic words, six year olds are still shaky on the whole reasoning thing. You remove the child from the situation entirely, which they did when they removed her to the principal's office. It says in the article she had ceased to tantrum and was simply crying quietly when the police arrived. I have to wonder why the police were called and not the parents. If police had taken my 6 year old away from school in hand cuffs without my having been given the opportunity to remove her myself I'd be pretty pissed.

Now, if the parents were called and simply refused to come, that's a different story, but I still think hand-cuffs are over-the-top. For one thing, there's a very real possibility of the six-year-old harming herself because she doesn't know enough not to struggle against the metal. It sounds to me like she's been failed by pretty much every adult in her life so far, from her parents on down, and she's likely to grow into an out-of-control teenager and see those hand-cuffs again.

Edit: I forgot to add, the suspension sounds entirely reasonable, however. If she was that violent, it's not a good idea to have her in school disrupting the other kids anymore. I am curious what spurred such a huge melt-down too. Wish there was more info in the article.

Vince524 said:

I report, you decide.

~~~ Hides under desk~~~

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Here, have a chair.

Vince524 said:

I didn't think I needed to provide much comment beyond the sarcasm, but if you insist, here goes.

I'm against this.

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Here, have a smilie holding a sign:

I agree -- it almost sounds from the article like the arrival of the police sent her into another fit. And unfortunately, you can't really reason with someone that young in that level of hysterics. At that point, she's not making a distinction about who she's hurting with her tantrum. An older child, even if they were really worked up, might be able to calm themselves down when they see the principal getting involved.

Another thing that bothers me -- there's lots of programs to teach kids that firefighters and police officers are safe people and they are there to help you. The idea is that if a child is caught in a burning building or another situation where they need to trust an officer to get them to safety, they won't run away or hide.

If the girl wasn't terrified of police officers before this incident, she is now.

But really, with no mention whatsoever about the parents, it's impossible to say what should've been done different.

Bookewyrme said:

It sounds to me like she's been failed by pretty much every adult in her life so far, from her parents on down, and she's likely to grow into an out-of-control teenager and see those hand-cuffs again.

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Based on one temper tantrum?

Bookewyrme said:

she had ceased to tantrum and was simply crying quietly when the police arrived.

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It doesn't exactly say that. It says:

The girl was crying in the principal's office at Creekside Elementary before police arrived.

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I wouldn't assume her crying was simple and quiet. I have a dramatic niece whose version of "crying" at that age including shrieking, caterwauling, accusations, threats and recriminations. It wasn't so much crying out of sadness or fright, but a quite deliberate and well-rehearsed way of using her emotions as a billyclub against anyone within earshot.

And if you said my niece's parents had failed her, I'd wholeheartedly agree.

Still, I'm not convinced they needed handcuffs. Although the article did say the police are excusing it with their "policy" that everyone riding in the back of a cruiser must be cuffed. I'm kind of not buying that, though.

Devil Ledbetter said:

It doesn't exactly say that.

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I must have misread the article. I could have sworn it said "crying quietly" but I was reading it quickly between chores. Still, presumably she had calmed down from "tantrum" to "crying" since the article made the distinction. That was progress.

I had the same thought as Katrina about the girl now being afraid of police. It always saddens me when people are made to fear police for whatever reason, because the whole purpose of a police force is to protect the citizens. Otherwise they're an armed militia, or army.

There's a lot implied (and left out) in the story.

"Six year old" ?

the girl tore items off the walls and threw furniture. The report also says the girl knocked over a shelf that injured the school principal.

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What size is this kid? What does "furniture" mean -- a wooden desk or a small plastic kindergarten chair?


And we don't know if parent were called, or much of anything else that happened.

It sounds nuts, sure. But...

Given that we may not have all the facts here, and considering that it is just possible that the adults involved, including the police, were actually doing the best they could, given that they didn't have all of us there to tell them how to do it better, I agree with Devil Ledbetter. I don't think it was necessarily handled all that poorly. They may have called the parents, may not have been able to reach the parents, may have gotten continued busy signals, may have reached the parents and the parents said "Don't bother us." We don't know. I'm reluctant to assume, on the basis of a brief news piece, that some teachers, a principal, and the police in Milledgeville were all too ignorant to try to do the right thing.

Vince, and I'm not making an effort to snark, where do you find stuff like this? Do you have Google Alerts set to 'outrage me'?

Vince524 said:

If she's not a danger to the other kids or herself or adults, I wouldn't have called the police. If it were that bad and you're going to call the fuzz, then this is bound to happen.

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Not a danger? What part of injured the principal am I misunderstanding?

TerzaRima said:

Vince, and I'm not making an effort to snark, where do you find stuff like this? Do you have Google Alerts set to 'outrage me'?

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Devil Ledbetter said:

Not a danger? What part of injured the principal am I misunderstanding?

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That's what I was wondering. In my opinion, from the facts presented, it was handled correctly. She was throwing furniture and endangering others, even going so far as to hurt the principle. What I can't believe is that people are defending her and saying stuff like, "She's just being a kid," in the comments. A tantrum of his level goes way beyond what is normal for a kid.