Signs of a sick culture

Signs of a sick culture

by digby

At least he wasn't tasered:

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...

[She] 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.


The good news:

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

That's nice. He is, after all, only five years old.

But then they're now prosecuting six year olds as sex offenders for playing doctor -- so I guess that's par for the course.

How does it happen that people come to believe that tiny children should be dealt with in the criminal justice system anyway? Why would that idiotic school think a five year old can be "scared straight" by a cop? He's a baby!

We are so twisted that we're infantilizing adolescence and turning tiny children into adults.

Get a load of this odious practice:



They should have put that mom in zip ties and thrown her in the back of a police car.

What is going on here?


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