Video After The Jump
"Don't make a wrong move," the officer said as he pinned the struggling subject to the ground. "Period."
The officer tightened the handcuffs around the subject's thin wrists.
"Ow, ow, ow, it really hurts," the subject exclaimed.
The officer pressed his weight into the subject's small body while school staff watched it all unfold. The person he was restraining was 7 years old.
"If you, my friend, are not acquainted with the juvenile justice system, you will be very shortly," the officer told the child.
Earlier that day, the child allegedly spit at a teacher. Now, he was in handcuffs & a police officer was saying he could end up in jail.
That child — a 2nd grader with autism at a North Carolina school — was ultimately pinned on the floor for 38 minutes. At one point the officer put his knee in the child's back.
In 2018, a 10-year-old with autism was pinned face down and cuffed in Denton, Texas.
Another boy with autism, just 11 years old, was handcuffed & dragged out of school & forced into a sheriff's deputy's car in Colorado in 2021.
That same year, officers handcuffed & screamed at a 5-year-old who had wandered away from school.
More than 700 children were arrested in U.S. elementary schools during the 2017-2018 school year alone.
Children with documented disabilities were 4 times more likely to be arrested at school.
Black students are even more disproportionately affected. They made up nearly half of all arrests at elementary schools. But they accounted for just 15% of the student population in those schools.
Anyone working with children with disabilities must understand how to respond when a child with an emotional or behavioral disorder acts out, according to Dr. Sonya Mathies-Dinizulu.
In a crisis, children need someone to "be there to help the kid start to de-escalate & help soothe," she said.
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Source: CBS News
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