Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Vocal bamb Here. Criminals come in all
Speaker 1: shapes and sizes, though it may strain definition that we
Speaker 1: can count as six year old throwing a temper tantrum
Speaker 1: and an elementary school among them, yet welcome to America.
Speaker 1: In late September nineteen, a Florida cop arrested two grade schoolers,
Speaker 1: slapped a pair of handcuffs on at least one of them,
Speaker 1: and sent them off to be booked, fingerprinted, and have
Speaker 1: their mugshots taken. Both children, again six year olds who
Speaker 1: misbehaved at school, were charged with misdemeanor battery. A bad
Speaker 1: day for harried police officer, Well, yeah, maybe a bad
Speaker 1: day for schools and the juvenile justice system. Absolutely. We
Speaker 1: spoke with Marcia Levic, the chief legal officer for the
Speaker 1: Juvenile Law Center, which bills itself as the country's first
Speaker 1: nonprofit public interest law firm for children. She said, does
Speaker 1: it get more ridiculous? It's absurd. It's a ridiculous abuse
Speaker 1: of law enforcement power and authority. But it's also a
Speaker 1: really unnecessary but all too common abdication on the part
Speaker 1: of schools and school districts. And teachers to just defer
Speaker 1: their management of school misconduct to police. The pure legality
Speaker 1: of charging a juvenile as young as six with a
Speaker 1: crime varies across the United States. To be clear, a
Speaker 1: juvenile in forty five states plus the District of Columbia
Speaker 1: is anyone younger than seventeen. In Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Texas,
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin, it's anyone younger than sixteen. A juvenile offender
Speaker 1: normally doesn't move through the criminal courts, but through the
Speaker 1: juvenile justice system, which is guided, according to the Office
Speaker 1: of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention quote by the concept
Speaker 1: of rehabilitation through individualized justice for more serious offenses, though
Speaker 1: juveniles may be tried in criminal court, where if found guilty,
Speaker 1: the court focuses on punishment, not rehab. Of fifty one
Speaker 1: jurisdictions that's the fifty states plus the District of Columbia,
Speaker 1: the pready three have no lower level limit on holding
Speaker 1: a young person criminally accountable. Levic says that includes Florida.
Speaker 1: In effect, that means that an over zealous cop legally
Speaker 1: can arrest even an unruly two year old. Of those
Speaker 1: eighteen other jurisdictions, most put the lower level that a
Speaker 1: kid can be charged with a crime at ten years old.
Speaker 1: In those locations, a six year old like the two
Speaker 1: in Florida simply could not be arrested or charged with
Speaker 1: a crime. Levic said, Obviously, it begs the question, how
Speaker 1: can that be? How can we possibly have created a
Speaker 1: juvenile court system that allows for the possibility that six
Speaker 1: and seven year olds can be arrested. I think they
Speaker 1: never envisioned a six or seven year old would be
Speaker 1: hauled into court. I think that's a fair assumption. That's
Speaker 1: not who they designed the system for. So what happened
Speaker 1: in Florida. A police officer with Orlando's Reserve Unit arrested
Speaker 1: the two six year olds on separate misdemeanor battery charges
Speaker 1: on September nineteen. One was a girl who lashed out
Speaker 1: in a in term that was brought on by a
Speaker 1: sleep disorder, the girl's family told The New York Times.
Speaker 1: On Monday, September twenty three, the Orlando Police Department fired
Speaker 1: the officer who made the arrests for not following protocol
Speaker 1: that required he get approval from his supervisor to arrest
Speaker 1: any minor younger than aged twelve. No charges were filed
Speaker 1: against the two children. Cops in schools, of course, are
Speaker 1: not new. Florida is one of many states that has
Speaker 1: bumped up its police presence in schools over the years.
Speaker 1: The Florida legislature mandated it after the shooting at Marjorie
Speaker 1: Stone when Douglas High School in Parkland, the claimed seventeen
Speaker 1: lives in February of The build up of police in
Speaker 1: schools is understandable in some ways. It's been more than
Speaker 1: twenty years since two students killed thirteen people and injured
Speaker 1: twenty one others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
Speaker 1: Since Columbine up until April of this year, America has
Speaker 1: been through two hundred and thirty eight other school shootings,
Speaker 1: according to a year long investigation by The Washington Post.
Speaker 1: This increased show of force, though, does come with problems.
Speaker 1: For one, as The Orlando Sentinel points out, citing a
Speaker 1: report by the Education Week Resource Center, black students are
Speaker 1: arrested at school at a disproportionately high rate. At least
Speaker 1: one of the children arrested in Orlando was black, and
Speaker 1: as the recent news out of Orlando shows, police and
Speaker 1: school kids, even elementary school kids, just sometimes don't mix,
Speaker 1: Levic said, we know where this is coming from. This
Speaker 1: fear of what happens when a child acts out in school,
Speaker 1: that there's going to be some catastrophic consequence emanates from Columbine.
Speaker 1: For twenty years, we've been overreacting. I'm not aiming to
Speaker 1: trivialize schools being so quick to call law enforcement. There
Speaker 1: are obviously many situations in which that's appropriate, but this
Speaker 1: is one that defies common sense. Most would agree that
Speaker 1: slapping cuffs on first graders probably is crossing a line.
Speaker 1: Zero tolerance certainly has its costs, Levic said. Initially, the
Speaker 1: thought was that there would be some rationality, some reasonableness
Speaker 1: injected into the school environment that would curb those extreme
Speaker 1: and absurd responses. But it may be that trusting and
Speaker 1: waiting for common sense to kick in isn't going to work.
Speaker 1: It may be that it does require a legislative response.
Speaker 1: Some movements across the nation aimed to raise the minimum
Speaker 1: age that a child can be charged with a crime
Speaker 1: to twelve years old. In some of those thirty three
Speaker 1: jurisdictions where no minimum age is set, there are calls
Speaker 1: to set something until then. Though school police officers may
Speaker 1: have to lean on something much less complicated than legislative
Speaker 1: action when faced with a prepubescent troublemaker, a deep breath,
Speaker 1: maybe a countdown from ten, and a little common sense.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by John Donovan and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio's Has Stuff Works. For more in this and lots
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