The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is decrying the arrest March 29 of four elementary school children in a Baltimore school, calling the act inexcusable.
“The actions of Baltimore City police in arresting and handcuffing 8- and 9-year-old children at school are appalling, and also in plain violation of state regulations regarding school arrests,” said Sonia Kumar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland’s Juvenile Justice Project, in a statement.
According to news reports, the arrests were the results of schoolyard fights that escalated into a near drowning and a child’s head being pushed onto a railroad track in Morrell Park. On March 29, nine days after the incidents, police went into the school, handcuffed the children and removed them to a juvenile detention center.
Baltimore police have defended their handling of the matter. “We handled the detentions as we would any felony suspect,” department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a Baltimore Sun article. “I think what they did to the victims speaks for itself. We worked with the school administration to get them out of class. Once we brought them to the office, they were arrested.”
According to state guidelines, “when possible and appropriate, arrest by police should be made during nonschool hours and away from the school premises.” All efforts should also be made to avoid embarrassment for the student (s) being arrested. And parents or guardians should be contacted immediately, the guidelines say.
Parents and others, however, question how officials handled the case.
“Police are now defending their actions by referencing allegations against the children, but there is simply no evidence to support BPD’s claim that it was necessary to handcuff 8- and 9-year-old children at school for an incident that had occurred nine days earlier off school grounds,” Kumar said.
“Regardless of whether or not it was appropriate to treat the fight between children as a criminal justice matter, the view that an 8- or 9-year-old child should be treated as ‘any felony suspect’ reflects a profound lack of perspective and the law’s longstanding distinction between young children and adults. We owe it to our children to be able to teach them the difference between right and wrong without using handcuffs,” she said.
