Five Year Old girl punched her teacher

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

Video shows police handcuffing 5-year-old

Lawyer releases tape of incident involving unruly Fla. girl

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A 5-year-old girl was handcuffed by police after she tore papers off a bulletin board and punched an assistant principal in kindergarten class, according to a video released by a lawyer for the child’s mother.

 

The 30-minute tape shows the child appearing to calm down before three officers pinned her arms behind her back and put on handcuffs as she screamed, “No!”

 

The camera was rolling March 14 as part of a classroom self-improvement exercise at Fairmount Park Elementary, attorney John Trevena said.

 

Trevena, who provided the tape to the media this week, said he got it from police.

 

“The image itself will be seared into people’s minds when you have three police officers bending a child over a table and forcibly handcuffing her,” said Trevena, who represents the girl’s mother, Inga Akins.

 

Police spokesman Bill Proffitt said an investigation into the matter would be complete in about two weeks and the findings would be made public.

 

Source: MSNBC (Is this a commie or fascist station? I can't keep up with you guys)

[Guest BDC]

Why am I fairly sure there's more to this story than what this article tells?

[Nightfall 0]

I saw the tape, and I feel the police did the right thing. Even if she had calmed down, the police have been called over this girl before. If anything, this will scare her enough so she will not do it again, at least for a while. The police didn't use any force, as it was a five year old girl. All they did was turn her around, gently put her hands behind her back, and cuffed her.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

Here is what I don't understand. You have a school full of adults AND police officers, and you need cuffs to restrain a 5 year old? Surely they can't be that weak.

[Jingus 0]

Maybe they were trying to make a point to the girl about just how seriously wrong her behavior was. I could sorta see that argument. But still, handcuffing a 5-year-old girl is a pretty fucked up thing to do.

[Paul Stanley 0]

Bitch deserved it.

[Dimensions 0]

Am I the only one who can't stop laughin?

[Slayer 0]

Didn't something similar happen a couple months ago?

 

(damned if I'm gonna hunt through past CE threads though)

[Guest Cerebus]

I'm guessing it was more for her sake than the sake of police officers. Angry children can easily hurt themselves in their temper tantrums, especially if she's as violent as this.

[Guest Brian]

Didn't they also want to hold her overnight in a cell?

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

There's a video for those who think that there might be more to the story, that way you don't have to worry about the shoddy reporting you're no doubt used to by now.

 

I have to say that putting a kid in handcuffs is retarded, especially when they're as young as five. The police should not have even been there in my opinion. I don't buy the police doing it as to protect her from herself, because that sort of logic doesn't seem to fall in line with the rest of the story. I think the most obvious answer would have been to call the parents. The teachers couldn't handle her, so they brought in the POLICE to handle the situation. Dumb.

[The Thread Killer 0]

The thing is, any teacher who even touches a kid nowadays is begging to get sued. If I was the teacher, I would have either:

 

1) Called the cops

 

or

 

2) Waited until nobody was looking, then punted the little snot right in the slats.

[SuperJerk 0]

I didn't see the video, but the version of the story I heard had the girl being generally destructive, and was restrained with a piece of plastic fastened around her wrists.

 

This article debunks most of Your Paragon of Virtue's criticisms.

 

ST. PETERSBURG - Videotape was rolling March 14 when the 5-year-old girl swung again and again, her bantam punches landing on the outstretched palms of Nicole Dibenedetto, the new assistant principal at Fairmount Park Elementary.

 

She tore papers off Dibenedetto's bulletin board and desk. She climbed on a table four times. About an hour had passed since she refused to participate in a kindergarten math lesson, which escalated into a series of defiant and destructive acts.

 

Dibenedetto had used tactics from a Pinellas school district training called Crisis Prevention Intervention:

 

Let the child know her actions have consequences but also try to "de-escalate."

 

Give her opportunities to end the conflict.

 

Try not to touch her, defend yourself and make sure no one else gets hurt.

 

As St. Petersburg police officers arrived shortly after 3 p.m., the girl suddenly sat quietly at Dibenedetto's table. And, just as suddenly, the tactics used by educators gave way to the more direct approach of law enforcement.

 

An officer sternly said the girl's name. Then: "You need to calm down. You need to do it now. OK?"

 

Seconds later, three officers approached and placed their hands on the girl's wrists and upper arms. They stood her up, put her arms behind her back and put on handcuffs. She bent over the table and let out a terrified scream.

 

"No. Nooooo. Ahhhhh."

 

The tape ends there.

 

Largo lawyer John Trevena provided it to the St. Petersburg Times this week after obtaining it from police.

 

"The image itself will be seared into people's minds when you have three police officers bending a child over a table and forcibly handcuffing her," said Trevena, who represents the girl's mother, Inga Akins. "It's incomprehensible ... She was sitting calmly at the table. There was no need for that."

 

The Police Department declined to comment, citing an official complaint by Akins that has sparked an investigation by the supervisor of the four officers involved. Two are new officers who were being trained that day. Police spokesman Bill Proffitt said the investigation would be complete in about two weeks and the findings would be made public.

 

The tape's existence is a fluke. The girl's teacher, Christina Ottersbach, was videotaping her class as a self-improvement exercise, district officials have said. Educators simply kept the camera rolling when the girl began to act out, prompting Dibenedetto to intervene and Ottersbach to escort her other students to another classroom.

 

Later, Ottersbach retrieved the camera from the classroom when the girl began to make a mess of Dibenedetto's office.

 

The tape, which lasts about 30 minutes, begins with Dibenedetto alone in the classroom with the girl, saying the child's name frequently as part of her commands.

 

"You need to stop," she tells her, using her hands to make the sign language signal for stop. "You don't get to wreck the room."

 

Using her radio, she calls for help from teacher Patti Tsaousis. She also asks the school office to call the girl's mother and tell her the school will have to call Pinellas Schools police if the behavior continues.

 

Word comes back that the mother would not be able to make it until 3:15 p.m. It is shortly after 2 p.m.

 

A short time later, the girl is heard off camera breaking a ceramic or plastic apple on Ottersbach's desk.

 

"Oh, you broke her apple," Dibenedetto says. "That is so sad."

 

Throughout the 23-minute segment in the classroom, the assistant principal tells the girl many times to stop, that her actions are "not acceptable." She tells her she needs to take her to her office to prepare for her mother's arrival.

 

The girl responds to each request with a curt, "No." When the girl reaches out to strike them at times, Dibenedetto and Tsaousis tell her to stop and hold their hands up in defense.

 

Dibenedetto and Tsaousis have two breakthroughs - once when they persuade the girl to clean up a small mess she made near Ottersbach's office and another when they finally get her to leave the classroom with them.

 

In the second instance, Dibenedetto brings herself to eye level with the girl and tries to get her to talk about why she's upset. She gives the girl the option of walking with her or Tsaousis to the office. When the girl relents, the educators praise her for making an "excellent choice."

 

The Times interviewed several top educators, including two district officials who had seen the video and two professors at the University of South Florida's College of Education.

 

All praised Dibenedetto for using patience and good training in a tough situation. They said she gave the girl wide latitude to opt for better behavior, used clear commands, called for help from another educator, removed the other students from the room for their safety and to eliminate an audience for the girl, reinforced commands with hand motions and successfully avoided physical confrontation.

 

Touching the girl, they said, would have escalated the situation.

 

The two educators "can't control what the children do, but they can control how they respond to it and, to me, they responded admirably," said Robert Egley, an assistant education professor at USF in St. Petersburg. "I give them an A-plus."

 

Trevena, the lawyer, disagreed, saying it appeared to him the two educators followed the girl too closely around the room. "It almost seemed like there was an intent to provoke the child," he said.

 

Akins, the girl's mother, said she had complained to the school about the assistant principal's treatment of her daughter. She said the administrator has been too harsh with the girl. The police had been called to the school at least once before in response to the girl's behavior. The girl has since transferred to another public school.

 

Dibenedetto could not be reached Thursday for comment.

 

More clear cut, Trevena said, are the police officers' actions and the Police Department's reaction. "It should have been denounced (by department higher-ups) as absurd, as excessive," he said. "That, I think, is even more alarming."

 

After being placed in the back of a police cruiser, police released the girl to her mother after the State Attorney's Office informed them a 5-year-old would never be prosecuted.

 

Educators declined to discuss the Police Department's role in the incident. But they all agreed that once police are called to a school, the situation is theirs to run. "I wasn't physically there," said Mike Bessette, an area superintendent whose responsibility includes Fairmount Park Elementary. "I take it they felt they needed to do what they did."

 

credit: http://saintpetersburgtimes.com/2005/04/22...police_ha.shtml

 

 

If I ever acted like that in school, my parents wouldn't have gotten me a lawyer, they'd have given me a beating.

 

The mom and the lawyer sound like total jackasses.

[Slayer 0]

Clearly the solution here is to stop having children and abolish all the ones already existing... sure it'd mean the extinction of humanity, but at least we wouldn't have these headaches anymore

[UseTheSledgehammerUh 0]

As a future teacher, I say, good for the teacher...I certainly wouldn't want the parents to turn it around on me with some kind of "I was mollesting her by removing her from class and/or I was prejudice by removing her from class" bullshit.

[2GOLD 0]

Florida is getting weird.

Very very weird and very dangerous.

[SuperJerk 0]

"Getting"?

[Dobbs 3K 0]

What the FUCK was the school supposed to do? If you try to restrain or discipline a child these days, you get sued. Calling the police was the SMART thing to do in my opinion. And how is it wrong to handcuff anyone? The police were doing their job. People need to quit being so idiotically sensitive in this country. The kid was out of control and the cops at least did something about it. The teacher tried to reason with the kid, and she wouldn't behave. So she deserved to get handcuff. Oh, and the lawyer is a moron if he thinks handcuffing a kid is excessive.

 

And like someone else said, if I had ever acted like that in grade school, I would've gotten the spanking of a lifetime.

[Guest Brian]

Yeah, they should of beat her over the head with a nightstick like they do with grown people of her color.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

MSNBC (Is this a commie or fascist station? I can't keep up with you guys)

Normally I'd say commie, but seeing how nobody actually watches MSNBC I don't think it matters much...

[The Czech Republic 0]

I think MSNBC can't decide if it's commie or fascist.

[Lord of The Curry 0]

File me under the "Bitch deserved it" column.

[Vyce 0]

This is why our schools are fucked up......when the school administration DOES discipline a kid, the parents either come down on their ass for daring to do the job the parents are usually to fucking lazy to do, or the parents are just completely apathetic towards their little monsters' antisocial behavior. People need to learn some fucking responsibility.

[SuperJerk 0]

*High-fives Invader3k and Vyce**

[Slayer 0]

Clearly the lawyers are also a problem

 

Abolish all the lawyers

[Lord of The Curry 0]

I'm surprised nobody has blamed Michael Moore for this somehow.

[SuperJerk 0]

At least nobody mentioned Nazis or death cults.

 

 

edit: D'Oh!

Edited April 26, 2005 by RobotJerk

[Styles 0]

Michael Moore had to be removed from class by the police when he was a kid because he wouldn't stop stealing all the hostess cakes and twinkies from the other kids' lunchboxes.

 

Maybe I should leave this to the professionals...

[Guest MikeSC]

This sounds SO MUCH like the kind of thing that the Nuremberg laws brought about.

-=Mike

[SuperJerk 0]

This sounds SO MUCH like the kind of thing that the Nuremberg laws brought about.

-=Mike

Except they released the girl to her mother.

 

Quit being a dick.