Friday, April 17, 2015

Felony charges for an autistic 11 year old.

World gone mad/the ongoing criminalization of childhood.  Schools Treat Mild Misbehavior Like Capital Crime. It Has to Stop. - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Administrators routinely treat mild disobedience from students as a criminal matter requiring police intervention, resulting in life-wrecking felony charges for kids—many of them black and Latino....

Consider the story of 11-year-old Kayleb Moon-Robinson: Diagnosed as autistic, Kayleb was being scolded for misbehavior one day and kicked a trash can at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A police officer assigned to the school witnessed the tantrum, and filed a disorderly conduct charge against the sixth grader in juvenile court. Just weeks later, in November, Kayleb, who is African-American, disobeyed a new rule — this one just for him — that he wait while other kids left class. The principal sent the same school officer to get him. “He grabbed me and tried to take me to the office,” said Kayleb, a small, bespectacled boy who enjoys science. “I started pushing him away. He slammed me down, and then he handcuffed me.”

...Educators stood by, she said, while the cop took her son in handcuffs to juvenile court. The officer filed a second misdemeanor disorderly conduct complaint. And he also submitted another charge, a very grown-up charge for a very small boy: felony assault on a police officer. That charge was filed, Doss said the officer told her, because Kayleb “fought back.” “I thought in my mind — Kayleb is 11,” Doss said. “He is autistic. He doesn't fully understand how to differentiate the roles of certain people.”"

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