5-Year-Old Handcuffed, Charged

[cmack]

http://www.kcra.com/r/29847063/detail.html


5-Year-Old Handcuffed, Charged With Battery On Officer
Boy Cuffed With Zip Ties On Hands, Feet
Dave Manoucheri/KCRA

POSTED: 2:59 pm PST November 23, 2011
UPDATED: 7:39 am PST November 24, 2011

Read more: http://www.kcra.com/news/29847063/detai ... z1eeVl0zi7

STOCKTON, Calif. (KCRA) -- Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

Michael Davis is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. His mother says it has led to fights at school. But when the school district said it had a plan to change Michael's behavior, his mother says things went wrong.

"Michael is energetic," Thelma Gray said. "He is one big ball of energy."

Gray calls Michael a comedian. She says his biggest problem is his ADHD stops him from thinking before he acts or speaks.

"He's very loving," Gray said. "He's a good kid and he's not the discipline problem that he was made out to be."

Those discipline problems include fights with other students, even throwing a chair.

Gray says the school, Rio Calaveras Elementary of Stockton, wanted to change that behavior by having Michael meet with a school police officer.

"He could come out and talk to Michael and the kids are normally scared straight," said Gray, describing how she says the school district proposed the meeting.

But the meeting didn't go as planned.

Gray says Michael was agitated when the officer entered the room, and the whole meeting ended with Michael arrested and cuffed, with zip ties on his hands and his feet.

"I was led to believe that Michael saw a police officer and attacked a police officer on sight," said Gray, adding that that's not what happened.

She knows because she ultimately obtained a copy of the police report.

In it, the officer, Lt. Frank Gordo, says he placed his hand on Michael's and, "the boy pushed my hand away in a batting motion, pushed papers off the table, and kicked me in the right knee."

When Michael wouldn't calm down, Gordo cuffed Michael's hands and feet with zip ties and took the boy to the Stockton Kaiser Psychiatric Hospital in the back of a squad car.

He had not called Michael's mother or father at that point.

Michael was cited for battery on a police officer.

"I didn't know until two or three weeks later that my son was zip tied," Gray said.

Her ex-husband had picked Michael up from the hospital. When he arrived, Michael's wrists were still zip tied behind his back.

KCRA 3 asked Rio Calaveras Elementary, the Stockton Unified School District and the Stockton Unified School District Police on multiple occasions to comment on what happened during Michael's meeting with the officer.

Both the police chief and the school district said they could not comment.

The district said it could not comment because of privacy laws regarding students and because the San Joaquin County Grand Jury and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights were investigating.

"I have been around young children that when they can't express themselves and don't feel they're being heard. They really need to make a loud statement in some way and it's often a very physical statement."
- UC Davis Professor of Education Shannon Cannon

Also, neither the district nor the Stockton School Police would comment on what procedures were in place to handle children with behavioral problems.

"Some of that's really abstract," said UC Davis Professor of Education Shannon Cannon, speaking on how young children react. "We need to try to make it a little bit more concrete," she said, adding that young children are often more physical than vocal.

When KCRA 3 interviewed Cannon, her students were learning about dealing with problem behavior in the classroom. Cannon says she has seen children as young as 7 years old act out physically and they can get violent, even dangerous to others around them -- but adds that it is important to have a behavioral plan in place as soon as the child is diagnosed.

She says children as young as 5 years old may not be able to tell an adult what is bothering them.

"I have been around young children that, when they can't express themselves, and don't feel they're being heard," says Cannon, adding that "they really need to make a loud statement in some way and it's often a very physical statement."

KCRA 3 obtained a copy of the U.S. Department of Education's report on Michael's arrest.

The report states that the Stockton Unified School District "delayed an evaluation of the student {Michael} which denied the student a fair and public education."

They added that the school didn't offer behavioral services to Michael or his mother, because "it would cost the district money."

The report goes on to say that, whether or not funds are available through state or federal grants, the school district had an obligation to have Michael evaluated, which it failed to do.

As for Michael's mother, Gray said she doesn't want an apology from the district, she simply wants the school district to help her get Michael the education he's entitled.

"I've been asking," Gray said. "I've been begging for any assistance for Michael to get placed appropriately and this is what they chose to do."

A juvenile court judge eventually dismissed the battery charges against Michael.

Copyright 2011 by KCRA.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Read more: http://www.kcra.com/news/29847063/detai ... z1eeVqIAvm

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[cmack]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/a ... 99382.html


November 25, 2011
Heroic School 'Resource Officer' Takes Down Five-Year-Old Boy
Posted by William Grigg on November 25, 2011 10:15 AM



Five-year-old Stockton, California resident Michael Davis has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a clinical term often used to pathologize the predictable behavior of young boys. Like many other boys his age, Michael doesn’t take well to prolonged “educational” detention, and sometimes proved to be a disruptive influence in his class.

Seeking to “cure” Michael of his rambunctiousness, the commissariat in charge of Rio Calaveras Elementary School arranged a meeting with Lt. Frank Gordo, a “resource officer” assigned to the district. The “scared straight” script called for Lt. Gordo — whose surname, so appropriate for a tax-feeder, is one of God’s little jokes — to waddle menacingly into the room, reducing young Michael to a puddle of docile obedience. Michael displayed a precociously healthy disposition by being un-intimidated by the state functionary in full battle array.

At one point, according to Gordo’s account, he placed his hand on Michael. This was the very definition of a “bad touch,” and Michael quite sensibly rebelled. Gordo reported that the youngster “pushed my hand away in a batting motion, pushed papers off the table, and kicked me in the right knee” — a perfectly proportionate response to armed physical aggression by a much larger assailant (although I suspect Michael’s aim was a little low).

Rather than backing off and calming down, which is how a functioning adult would have behaved, Gordo escalated the assault and compounded it with armed abduction by hog-tying the five-year-old — zip-tying his hands and ankles and dragging him to the station, where he was charged with “battery on a police officer.” The child would remain trussed for at least two hours. During that time he was forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation — since, as all dutiful subjects in the Soyuz understand, only someone clinically ill would display such hostility toward an agent of the State.

It wasn’t until two weeks later that the police and school district deigned to share the details of the incident with Michael’s mother, Thelma Gray. “I was led to believe that Michael saw and police officer and attacked a police officer on sight,” Gray told a news team from the local NBC affiliate KCRA.

Michael, whose parents are divorced, may have emotional problems. This much should be said: Whatever “affliction” inspired this youngster’s reflexive hostility toward a member of the State’s punitive priesthood is something I wish the rest of us would catch.

It’s worth noting that “resource officers” — the uniformed bullies who prowl the hallways of government schools looking for trouble — are taught to see themselves as an army of occupation whose mission is to overawe a hostile population.

In his keynote address to the 2007 National Association of School Resources Conference, held against the rugged and forbidding backdrop of Orlando's Disney World, self-styled tactical and counter-terrorism  “expert” John Giduck opened a window into this mindset:

"You've got to be a one-man fighting force...You've got to have enough guns, and ammunition and body armor to stay alive...You should be walking around in schools every day in complete tactical equipment, with semi-automatic weapons.... You can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers...You must think of yourself [sic] as soldiers in a war because we're going to ask you to act like soldiers."

Perhaps the intrepid Lt. Gordo will receive the equivalent of the Purple Heart for the wounds of honor he received in hands-on combat with Michael Davis.

[Ursus]

From that first article in the OP, emphasis added:

"[The police officer] could come out and talk to Michael and the kids are normally scared straight," said Gray, describing how she says the school district proposed the meeting.[/list]
"Scared straight" programs are widely recognized to be very ineffectual, if not potentially damaging. It's amazing how strongly school districts continue to cling to disproved and outmoded methodologies...