"AP--3rd-Graders Arrested for Their Drawings
Two boys ages 9 and 10 in Ocala, Fla., have been arrested and charged with a second-degree felony for making primitive pencil-and-crayon stick figure drawings on scrap paper that depicted a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, reports The Associated Press. Police took the children, who are special education students, out of school in handcuffs.
The official charge: Making a written threat to kill or harm another person. The two have been suspended from their elementary school. One of the drawings showed the two boys standing on either side of the other boy and "holding knives pointed through" his body, AP says of the police report. They identified each person in the drawing with written names or initials.
A second drawing showed a stick figure hanging with tears falling from his eyes and the other two stick figures standing below him. In addition, other pieces of paper had misspelled profanities and the initials of the boy they were allegedly threatening. The boy who was depicted as the victim saw the drawings and told his teacher, who confiscated the sketches and informed the school's dean. The dean then called police, who consulted with the State Attorney's office before making the arrest. AP reports that the boys' parents said they thought the children should be punished by the school and families and not the legal system."
I actually heard this on the radio this morning, and had to find it for an article here.
Now, I'm all for stopping school violence before it starts and getting the proper care for warped little kids like this.
I can't help but think, however, that the image of grown police officers leading two young boys of those ages out of their school in handcuffs is a bit extreme and ludicrous. I mean....handcuffs? Did they think there was a danger of the kids harming the officers? Could the police not catch them if they'd tried to run away?
When I was a teenager, I was involved in a little trouble and was picked up by the police; I was placed into the back of the car, but was not cuffed, despite my age, which was 15; I was a football player, and had been on a steady weight-lifting regimen for over a year. I was pretty well cut then, if I do say so myself, and could have done much more damage to the officer (my town employed part-timers as cops; it was their second job) than these kids, 9 and 10. Maybe that was a different era, but still.....these are misguided kids, making vague threats, not gangbanging hoods who just committed a drive-by.
This zero-tolerance stuff is getting out of hand; I think that this experience may do them more harm than good.