Posted on 09/17/2005 2:30:08 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
ST. PETERSBURG - A girl, upset over a tetherball game, throws a tantrum during an afterschool program at Fairmount Park Elementary. She stomps on a table, tears things from the wall, pushes a television off a stand.
It's a strikingly familiar scene.
Six months ago, St. Petersburg police made international news by handcuffing a tempestuous Fairmount kindergartener as a video camera rolled.
Last week, police were called to the school again. This time, the officer stood and watched, waiting for the girl's father to arrive.
"He was totally powerless. What's he going to do? Grab her? Handcuff her?" Sgt. Phil Quandt, the officer's supervisor, said Friday. "It'll be like the 5-year-old all over again."
Quandt, also a union official, said new rules created in the outrage that followed the handcuffing have now left police afraid to act. "It needs to be vague enough where our officers, when faced with whatever threat, are able to adequately respond," he said.
The officer's hands-off approach to the Sept. 9 incident - which came to light on Friday - reflects a new policy not to use restraints unless the child is armed or considered violent. The officer acted properly, police spokesman Bill Proffitt said.
Quandt, however, thinks the officer should have felt free to prevent the girl from wrecking the room and perhaps hurting herself. But he understands the officer's reluctance.
The incident also raises fresh questions about who is responsible for the safety of children after class is over, exposing a gray area in the newly forged understanding between police and the school district.
The 8-year-old girl who acted up last week goes to Hamilton Disston School in Gulfport, for children who are severely emotionally disturbed or who have other disabilities such as speech or vision impairments. After school, she is bused to Fairmount for R'Club, a nonprofit learning program.
R'Club operates at Fairmount and more than two dozen other schools in Pinellas. Though it coordinates with the school district on curriculum, the program is independently run and financed.
The call to police last Friday came about 4:20 p.m. The girl got upset after playing tetherball, hit a boy, then kicked off her shoes and stormed out of school, said Art O'Hara, executive director of R'Club. A supervisor called St. Petersburg police, fearing for the girl's safety.
By the time Officer Michael Gattarello Jr. arrived, a club worker had coaxed the girl back to the school. When she saw the police car, O'Hara said, she got frightened and began terrorizing the room. About 60 other students were ushered outside.
The girl, O'Hara noted, was familiar with police since an officer returned her to school about three weeks ago after she ran away.
Gattarello, following the new guidelines, called a sergeant and asked that schools police be called to handle the situation. But those officers stop working at 4 p.m. on Fridays, as opposed to 10 p.m. on other weekdays.
"I continued to stand by while (the girl) tore up the area and awaited her parents' arrival," the officer wrote in a report.
With 19 officers to police the district's 50,000 elementary students, the school force is spread decidedly thin. Still, schools police Chief Tom Gavin said that is not a factor in Friday hours; rather, he said, there are no school programs at that time.
Since R'Club is an independent organization, would school police be responsible anyway?
"That's where the gray area is," said school district spokesman Ron Stone.
Superintendent Clayton Wilcox said his initial impression was that R'Club is responsible for handling such situations after school hours, but he added he wasn't sure about the details. He said the district is taking a look at its agreement with R'Club to see whether it covers this situation. He said he also wants to know more about the training level of R'Club employees.
When the district changed its procedures in the wake of the 5-year-old's handcuffing, a situation like this was not contemplated, Wilcox said. Under the change, district employees are not to call city police for a misbehaving child who is 9 years old or younger or who is in third grade or lower. The only exceptions are when safety is an issue, such as when a student has a weapon.
Police Chief Chuck Harmon was unavailable for comment Friday.
Wilcox said it could be argued that R'Club employees are agents of the district and subject to the same rules and procedures, but he did not know.
"This has given us a little pause," he said. "We're going to look at it real hard first thing Monday morning and see what we can learn.'
Noting that no one was hurt, he said of the incident, "I think it ended as well as it could have ended."
Alex Leary can be reached at 727 893-8472 or leary@sptimes.com
We have had several children like this at the Primary School where I work. One girl was quite like the one in this article, although she was 7. She would throw fits in the classroom, attack other students and the teacher, and her parents said her behavior was very similar at their home.
One night, about 2:00 am a police officer (who happened to be the brother of this girl's teacher) saw her wandering the streets alone. He called DSS (Department of Social Services- as is required when young children are involoved in situations like this) he followed the girl in his patrol car, and eventually got her in his car.
When he took her back to her house, her parents were still in bed- they had no idea she had gotten out of the house. A person with DSS met the officer at the girl's house.
This woman got there in time to hear the furious father tell the girl he was going to spank her for what she did. This woman looks at the father and told the officer that if he touched his daughter he was to be arrested. She then told the child that if he or her mother spanked her she was to call her so her parents could be arrested.
The officer told the DSS worker she didn't know what she was doing, that his sister worked with this child and that DSS was only making the sitaution worse. He went on to tell the woman that he would not arrest the father for disciplining his child. The child ended up being commited for a psychiatric evaluation and medicated.
Did you know that DSS workers only have Sociology degrees? I met one at a ball game who was still working on hers at a community college, yet she was already employed by DSS. (Just my opinon: The college students majoring in Sociology that I knew personally were not too bright. Apologies for my boadbrushing and to any who might be intelligent and diligent in their jobs at DSS.)
"No mention of how the girl behaved when her father showed up."
I was wondering about that too.
"Journalism remedial courses recommended for this reporter."
Yes, and a brush-up on clarity in writing while he or she is at it.
"This is the kind of thing that makes anyone in their right mind NOT want to become a police officer." BEING A TEACHER DOESNT SEEM LIKE AN OPTION EITHER!
Where are the parents of the "normal" children in the class?Why arent they protesting this learning environment?
So true...and also the trashing of the greatest public school system in the world by the NEA, the courts, and the tort lawyers so that we are now producing only uneducated morons....a greater threat to America than any terrorist group.
And if you told them that, they would probably curse you out. We have friends who also have a little 4 yr. old hellion. On the rare occasion we meet them for dinner, I pray they will leave him with grandma. It never happens and neither does a pleasant dining experience. He always ends up crying a throwing a fit because they finally stop him from climbing on the table, running around, flinging food everywhere, etc.
Radioactive paddle?
50 years ago the only opportunities for women were teaching, nursing, secretatial work and a few others. The brightest and the best were available to teach.
Now we have the NEA who has seen to it the there are hordes of "teachers", (most of whom could never measure up to the intellectual capabilites of the past). The most capable women go on to medicine, science, law, and other places where skills are measured and rewards appropriately given.
The public school system of today has been destroyed by the NEA and the law.....Be a hamburger flipper (probably safer) or a teacher...take your pick.....the laws of supply and demand prevail.
I think you've hit the nail on the head, but I don't think the fault is so much that of the NEA - it's mostly because women now have so many more opportunities.
Why should one settle for being "just a teacher" when all those other jobs pay more and are seen as higher status and more intellectually challenging?
YES -BUT remember teachers have to put up with the unruley kids and their parents. Try controlling 20+ little ratbastards whose parents threaten to sue you if you try to impose order....or 6+ tards with behavior SO bad it's impossible for normal students to learn.
"Unfortunately, that means the slack will have to be taken up by people who are not in their right mind."
And unfrotunately you are right and THAT is a scary proposition. From what I've read this is much the case in New Orleans.
One has to wonder if a child who is too disturbed to be in the regular school should be in an afterschool program with the other children.
I'm sure the teachers in school for emotionally disturbed children were trained in restraint techniques, but I doubt that would be the case for the people running the afterschool program.
As I was logging in, the thought crossed my mind that if conservatives were the "disciplined parents", then liberals were the "children throwing temper tantrums". Interesting coincidence to come upon this article.
Sending the parents a bill under this condition is roughly the same as the Chicom practice of sending a bill for the bullet to the family of folks they execute.
One does hope, however, that you fellows discovered the power of self-reliance when you meted out a rough sort of justice to the stool-pigeon in your midst (or did you sell out to the man)?
If an organization for "children who are severely emotionally disturbed" isn't equiped to handle them then they should be shut down. This shouldn't be a police matter to begin with. I suspect that the school and the R'Club are taking government money to "care" for these children then passing the buck when there is a problem.
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