One News Now – by Michael F. Haverluck
Forget sitting in the corner or getting sent to the principal’s office. Not in Virginia, at least, where a four-year-old preschooler at an elementary school was handcuffed, shackled, and taken by a sheriff in a squad car to the police station. There he was forced to talk to jail inmates to “scare” him straight. And just for safe measure, the school threw in a suspension.
The crime? The preschooler defiantly tossed a few items on the floor in class.
Since the incident, school officials agreed to drop a couple of disciplinary measures taken against the pre-kindergarten student at Nathanael Greene Primary School (NGPS) in Stanardsville, Virginia. The Rutherford Institute reports that the official reason for removing the four-year-old from the classroom on October 16 was his “becoming agitated and throwing several items onto the floor.”
The incident was all but swept under the rug until The Rutherford Institute sent a written protest to the school in December, challenging the disturbing disciplinary measures taken against the student. In response to the Institute’s written challenge, the Greene County School District (GCSD) mitigated its disciplinary measures against the student this week.
“[The district agreed] to rescind the suspension of a four-year-old preschool student [and] remove the documentation of the disciplinary action from the child’s records,” the Institute announced.
But even though officials at NGPS claimed that they played no part in allowing the child to be disciplined in such a way, they contended that they stood behind the school’s decision to handle the situation the way it did.
“Moreover, school officials have indicated they would undertake a review of the division’s restraint policy and practices, all the while asserting that they never approved of or directed the use of such restraints as a method of managing student behavior problems,” Rutherford Institute stated. “Nevertheless, the administration is defending the decision by school officials to have the school resource officer intervene in the incident involving the four-year-old.”
Besides having a problem with the school officials’ handling of the incident, the Institute argues that the law enforcement official involved should be held accountable for inappropriately dealing with a four-year-old preschooler.
“Rutherford Institute attorneys will continue to advise the four-year-old’s mother regarding her legal options regarding the use of force by the sheriff’s deputy,” the Charlottesville, Virginia-based legal organization informed.
More often than you know
According to Rutherford president John W. Whitehead, such incidents are by no means a rare occurrence. As some would put it, “these aren’t your parents’ schools anymore.”
“This is not an isolated incident,” assured Whitehead, who as a constitutional attorney founded the Institute in 1982. “Every week, The Rutherford Institute is asked to intervene in yet another case in which a child is suspended, handcuffed, arrested and subjected to all manner of injustices for daring to act like children: asking questions, using their imaginations, refusing to be politically correct, and telling the truth.”
Whitehead says that school campuses across America resemble detention camps more than learning facilities.
“With many of America’s schools now looking more like prisons than learning facilities, with metal detectors at the entrances, drug-sniffing dogs in the hallways and surveillance cameras in the classrooms and elsewhere, it’s no wonder our young people are being treated like criminals and are growing up believing that they have no rights,” Whitehead insisted.
No excuse
Whitehead decries that it’s a shame that students entrusted to academic and developmental “professionals” would be subjected to such brazen treatment.
“That such extreme restraints would even be contemplated in a case such as this points to a failure by those in leadership to provide the proper guidance to school personnel in what forms of restraint and force are appropriate when dealing with students, especially the youngest and most vulnerable,” Whitehead noted.
“It is imperative that Green County Public Schools take steps to assure [the student’s mother] and the rest of the community of parents and concerned citizens that what happened to [the student] will not happen again to him or other students of similar age.”
Even though the student’s mother was informed about his misbehavior – and told school officials that she was on her way to the school – they also took it upon themselves to give a deputy sheriff from Greene County a call to confront the four-year-old on his behavior, which exasperated the problem.
“The officer escalated the situation by treating the four-year-old as if he were being arrested: handcuffing [the student] and transporting him in a police car to a Greene County sheriff’s office,” the Institute stated in its letter to the district. “[At the sheriff’s office, he] forced [the four-year-old] to speak with persons who had been arrested in an apparent attempt to ‘scare straight’ the preschooler.”
According to the Institute, there was no legitimate basis for the police department’s action toward the preschooler, whose name remains anonymous.
“No child, particularly children of tender years who are as emotionally fragile as [the student] should have to endure the shock and fright that accompanies handcuffing and shackling,” the letter continued. “These extreme forms of restraint are meant to be used only in those instances where law enforcement officers would be endangered by their proximity to unencumbered persons who pose a risk of violence.”
You don’t understand, the cop feared for his life.
Any parent who would send their kid back to school after an incident like this is an idiot.
The cops and the school system are working the commie agenda, as expected, but they’re getting away with it, and advancing it because of the lack of resistance on the part of Americans.
It gets worse and worse every week because people don’t push back, but when they do, it’s going to be beautifully ugly.
People are angry and frustrated because there’s very little any one of them can do, but when the ball starts rolling, a lot of that frustration is going to be unchained in an extremely violent manner. I hope you don’t have a weak stomach.
So now the cops have to carry pedo-sized cuffs for these small, dangerous children. I need to invest in the company making these reduced sized cuffs.
YOU GOTTA UNDERSTAND FOLKS….THIS IS ALL JUST CONDITIONING, FOR SOCIETY, UNDER THE NEW WORLD ORDER.
YOU THINK THIS IS BAD? JUST WAIT TILL THEY GET YOUR GUNS AWAY.
YOU AINT SEEN/HEARD NOTHIN YET.
HAVE KNOWN SINCE IN GRADE SCHOOL, THIS IS A PRISON AND WE ARE BEING CONDITIONED/BRAINWASHED LIKE PRISONERS.
What we are seeing with all of these discipline problems in government brain washing facilities now is simply proof of the failed politically correct social engineering that has taken place over the years. The up side is now their are pigs,op’s I mean law enforcement officers that are their to use tazers, clubs,cuffs,guns,what ever it takes to control what government mandates have created.If you were to us that kind of force on your own child they would instantly remove that child from you but if a f#@king pig does it all is well! This government on all levels has created this mess we are seeing now and will continue to do the same thing as long as the the sheep only bleat. How can so many not see what is right in front of their faces,is it fear perhaps.