HungryBlues

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The New World

By Erica Chappuis

UPDATE: Visit Erica Chappuis' website here (warning: contains sexually explicit content).

Professor Kim Live Blogging From Buffalo

This year's annual convention for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History is being held in Buffalo to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Niagara Movement.

Professor Kim is there and she is live blogging with audio posts.

Particularly interesting was the interview with Dr. Gwendolyn Webb-Johnson concerning her work on something she calls "instructional racism," the racism that causes teachers to have low expectations for African American students and to funnel them through the special education system, in which they are grossly over represented.

Oh What A Beautiful City

Pete Seeger continues to be a big favorite for my toddler. Standing in the chair in front of our stereo, he pulls the Pete Seeger CD of choice out of the stack, gets the disc out of the case, opens the CD player drawer, places the disc in, closes the drawer—and finds his favorite songs by himself.

This all started with him simply calling out the names of songs or artists he wanted to hear and repeating the name with great insistence, until we relented. Then he started asking for CDs to put into the player himself. And now, most recently, he's been cuing up the desired songs without help.

The first song we saw him do this with was Sweet Potatoes, on We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Concert (1963). Our little boy figured out how to press the track advance button three times to get to track 3 on disc 2. What really blew our minds, though, was when he figured out how to get to track 18 on the Children's Concert At Town Hall (Abiyoyo). I'm pretty sure that at 2 1/2 he hasn't learned to count to 18 but rather has learned to recognize what the track number for Abiyoyo looks like in the CD player display. Still, it's pretty darn cool . . .

It's a good thing I like Pete Seeger so much. Instead of getting sick of the recordings, I've been finding new pleasures in songs I hadn't paid as much attention to when I was younger. The first song that struck me this way was Pete's rendition of the the John Lair song, Little Birdie. The liner notes say Pete learned the song in the 1940s from one the Coon Creek Girls, who were Lair's proteges. Pete's mountain-style banjo on this track is hypnotic, and the lyrics are beautiful. When I tried to find a transcription of them online, there were many versions of the song, but none with words that Pete sings on this recording—which makes me think that it was Pete himself who came up with this most deeply poetic and mysterious version of the song that I've come to love so well:

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes you fly so high?
It's because I am a true little bird
And I do not fare to die?

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your wings so blue?
It's because I've been a grieving
Grievin' after you.

Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your head so red?
Well after all that I've been through
It's a wonder I ain't dead.

Little birdie, little birdie,
Come sing to me a song.
I've a short while to be here,
And a long time to be gone.

In the middle two verses, the movement between the images and the states of mind and emotion they signify reminds me of reading William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Exprience (of all things). Maybe that's just the ballad tradition bubbling up through both the 19th and 20th centuries, but I can't really say.

Now to the song that got me writing this post in the first place: Oh What A Beautiful City, as performed on We Shall Overcome. You can read the lyrics of a different version here, but first just sit back and listen.

The credits say Pete's version is as adapted and arranged by Marian Hicks. There is almost nothing about her on the internet, and there do not seem to be any recordings to her name. In looking around, I discovered a noted arrangement by Edward Boatner, who seems like an interesting figure in Black musical history whom I hadn't heard of before.

I really want to know about Marian Hicks. If any readers can tell me more about her, or if anyone knows good recordings of Oh What A Beautiful City by African American gospel artists, or any other interesting recordings, or anything else about the song's history, please let me know in the comments.

UPDATE
My wife recalls reading in Rise Up Singing that Marian Hicks was an African American friend of Pete Seeger's family and that he learned to sing the song from her. I don't actually have copy of RUS, but I'll check this out as soon as I can.

CORRECTION
Second stanza of Little Birdie corrected from "dreaming" and "dreamin'" to "grieving" and "grievin'."

Ja'eisha Scott Update: Officers Let Off Easy, Cover-up Of School Responsibility Continues

Yesterday, the St. Petersburg, FL Police Department issued a report concerning the allegations that Officers Mark Williams and Nicholas Lazzari were guilty of "Inefficiency / Conduct Unbecoming an Employee [CUBE]" when they handcuffed five-year-old Ja'eisha Scott at Fairmount Elementary School last March in St. Petersburg. While the resultant change in police and school policy concerning children in kindergarden through third grade is good, the focus on the conduct of the officers avoids the real questions about what is happening inside the Pinellas County Schools.

Police Department investigators found that

Some department violations were committed by the officers involved. For example, Officer Williams did not properly check out on the radio on three different occasions during these events. A more in-depth and thorough investigation should have been conducted prior to taking Ja'Eisha into custody. Officer Lazzari stated in his police report and then verbally to a supervisor that he felt the Baker Act [pdf] would have been appropriate. However, he should have recognized that Ja'Eisha did not qualify as a Baker Act.

Ultimately, the final disposition was the proper one. Ja'Eisha was released to her mother at the scene. She had not been transported from the school grounds at any time. No charges were filed and no referrals were made.

Both charges were sustained against Officer Williams and the charge of inefficiency was sustained against Officer Lazzari, but the Police Department has taken no disciplinary action against them. Rather, the St. Petersburg Police Department has issued a revision of its Juvenile Procedures:

In essence, supervisors will become involved in the disposition of children under the age of eight (8) prior to them being taken into custody. Our Legal Division will also be publishing a Legal Notice to all personnel indicating that in our Circuit Court, children less than eight (8) years of age are generally not prosecuted for crimes. Our Youth Resources Division has been tasked with working with the school system to develop some training for the patrol officer in dealing with small children who are displaying violent or disruptive behavior.

Th police investigation "found no evidence of racism by the officers." I've written extensively about the racism inherent in this story and about Florida's child-hating juvenile policy. However, I'd like to return to another theme of my reporting on Ja'eisha Scott case—the cover-up of the school's role in Ja'eisha's abuse, especially the role of Assistant Principal Nicole Dibenedetto.

When I was writing about this story in April, I noted that there were two conflicting accounts as to whether Ms. Dibenedetto pursued any measures other than calling St. Petersburg Police. An early report said Ms. Dibenedetto attempted to call Pinellas Schools police, but there was a mix up and someone in the school office called the city police instead. A later report stated that "the school called city police again after Pinellas schools police could not come," suggesting that the school did, in fact, call and get through to the school police.

In the Executive Summary of the St. Petersburg Police Memorandum on the allegations concerning "Inefficiency / Conduct Unbecoming an Employee," published in yesterday's SP Times, there is a detailed description of the chain of actions that led to city police coming to Fairmount Elementary School on a call concerning Ja'eisha Scott, the week before the handcuffing that was captured on video.

On March 8, 2005, Ja'Eisha engaged in inappropriate conduct in her classroom. An attempt was made by school staff to contact her mother and grandmother to respond to the school, but neither of them were immediately available to respond. The staff contacted Pinellas County Schools police and attempted to get them to respond as Ja'Eisha was becoming more disruptive. They had no one immediately available to respond, and the St. Petersburg Police Department was contacted to respond. The Communications Center processed the call, but before it was dispatched, a patrol supervisor was contacted, and the supervisor appropriately canceled the call. The school was recontacted and was advised police would not be responding. Historically, the Pinellas County Schools police would handle all calls for service at public elementary schools if the call did not involve drugs, weapons or other similar situations.

Yet in the Executive Summary account of March 14, when Ja'eisha Scott was handcuffed and video taped, there is no explanation of what led to the police dispatch of officers to the school. The account begins with the officers hearing from the dispatcher in their cruisers.

On March 14, 2005, Officers Nicholas Lazzari and Joshua Hanes were dispatched to a "Disorderly Juvenile." The dispatcher said, "It looks like it's a battery on a school official by a 5-year-old." The dispatcher also mentioned "Ja'Eisha Scott" by name while broadcasting the call. Because they were familiar with her, Officers Williams and Westerman rightly responded to assist. The officers arrived at the same time, and while walking toward the office, Officer Williams told Officers Lazzari and Hanes that he had contact with Ja'Eisha in the past involving a similar incident in which she destroyed property and battered a school employee. Officer Lazzari said Officer Williams indicated to him that this child may need to go to jail.

What is Fairmount Elementary School trying to hide? Why are the police colluding in keeping murky the facts of what happened inside the school while Ja'eisha Scott was having her famous tantrum?

The new rules announced yesterday are a positive development:

Under the new rules announced Thursday, dispatchers who take calls involving students in kindergarten through third grade must first ask if Pinellas Schools Police have been contacted. Superintendent Clayton Wilcox has directed principals at the district's elementary schools to do the same.

If school police have been reached, city police will not be sent except in "aggravating, extreme circumstances," according to the policy.

And even in those cases, officers must consult a supervisor before taking a child into custody. The supervisor will consider alternative ways of resolving the conflict, including calling a parent and using de-escalation techniques.

These procedures should help the schools avoid future police handling of children from kindergarden to third grade. But these are bare minimum measures that do not even go so far as to protect children who are in grades 4-8. There is a documented problem with Pinellas County (and the rest of Florida) criminalizing children under 12.

Most essentially, however, the focus on the police and not on the school diverts attention from profound problems concerning racism and anti-child policies in the Pinellas County schools. Without a public commitment to telling the truth about what happened to Ja'eisha Scott—and about what happens to other children, especially what happens to African American children, in Pinellas County schools—there is no real hope for progress.

Related Posts

• St. Petersburg Police Bind Hands And Feet Of 5-Year-Old African-American Girl
• Arresting Children Under 12 In Florida
• Discerning The Social Fabric Of St. Petersburg, Florida (I)
• Discerning The Social Fabric Of St. Petersburg, Florida (II)
• What Is Going On In The Pinellas County Schools??
• Accounts Of Police Involvement In Ja'eisha Scott Case Raise New Questions About Assist. Principal Dibenedetto's Intent
• "I think they were good people . . . [Ja'eisha] didn't act like that over here."
• Criminalizing Children In Florida
• What's Race Got To Do With It?
• They Kept Ja'eisha Cuffed In Their Cruiser For Hours After Her Mom Arrived

Studs On Pete

This is a little dated, but it's good and Technorati says hardly anyone blogged it. For all my fellow red diaper babies:

Pete Seeger Is 86

by STUDS TERKEL

It is hard to think of Pete Seeger as an elderly gaffer, because the boy in him, the light, remains undimmed. It was sixty-five years ago I first ran into him. He and three of his colleagues, calling themselves the Almanac Singers, were on a cross-country jalopy tour singing and creating songs for the industrial unions aborning. The CIO had begun, and how could there be labor rallies without songs? It was in the true American tradition, like the Hutchinsons, a family of singing abolitionists during the Civil War. Some of the most heartbreaking music of that fratricidal conflict was theirs.

That night when I first encountered the four wandering minstrels was a cold Chicago beauty. At 2 in the morning, my wife heard the doorbell ring. I was away rehearsing the first play in which I had ever appeared. It was Waiting for Lefty, of course. There, at the door, were the four of them. The first was a bantam--freckled, red-haired and elfin. He handed my wife a note saying: "These are good fellas. Put them up for the night." Putting them up was a rough assignment, even for a Depression-era social worker, what with the only spare bunk being a Murphy bed that sprang from the wall. Freckles announced himself as Woody Guthrie. The second was an Ozark mountain man named Lee Hayes. The third was a writer, Millard Lampell. The fourth, somewhat diffident, more in the background, was a slim-jim of 20 or so, fretting around with his banjo. He was Pete Seeger.

Since then, Woody has died. So has Lee Hayes. So has Millard Lampell. Only Pete breathes and sings, mesmerizing audiences, whether they be Democrats, lefties, vegans or even a sprinkling of Republicans. For sixty-five years, he has held forth continuously through periods known more for their bleakness than for their hope: the cold war, the witchhunt, the civil rights and civil liberties battles. Pete has been in all of them. Wherever he was asked, when the need was the greatest, he, like Kilroy, was there. And still is. Though his voice is somewhat shot, he holds forth on that stage. Whether it be a concert hall, a gathering in the park, a street demonstration, any area is a battleground for human rights. That is why describing him as an 86-year-old gaffer is not quite true. The calendar often deceives. This is a sparkling case in point.

Of course, he's been blacklisted so many times he probably holds the dubious record, with the possible exception of Paul Robeson, who was often his partner in crime.

Before we hoist one for Pete, let's also remember that he's one of the best choirmasters in the country. He may not have the technique of Robert Shaw, but the result is just as explosive. Imagine an audience of thousands as Pete sings, say, "Wimoweh." As Pete waves his arms gently, the audience reacts as a professional choir might. I've seen a wizened little man, who obviously is somebody's bookkeeper, at the command of Pete become a basso profundo, reaching two octaves lower than Chaliapin. This is the nature of Pete Seeger, who reaches out toward the further shores more effectively and more exhilaratedly than anyone I've ever run into.

Hail Pete, at 86, still the boy with that touch of hope in the midst of bleakness. There ain't no one like him.

(The rest is over at The Nation)

Might as well mention, in case you missed it the first time around, that I did a little bit about Pete Seeger a just over a year ago. I was actually writing about Louis Armstrong, but Pete figured into it, too.

In that post from last summer, I mention getting Pete Seeger's Children's Concert at Town Hall on cd after having listened to the lp endlessly as a child. The cd has been getting a lot of play around here lately because at almost 2 1/2 my son is now old enough to have his own enjoyment of Pete Seeger.

Even if you don't have kids, the Children's Concert is really worth getting. My wife gets choked up almost every time she hears all the children in the audience singing along—which only makes Pete's "touch of hope in the midst of bleakness" that much more poignant, especially these days . . .

The concert was recorded in 1962, so all those kids are grown up and older than I am. I sometimes wonder who they are in the world today.

Good Stuff From The Comments

• After I blogged my friend Dana's memoir piece on her 1999 trip to Auchwitz, she commented to send me over to the website of Peter Cunningham, the photographer whose photo of Dana appears in her article.

Peter has spent years photographing musicians and there is a nice link on his site to those pictures. Open it up and you see many pictures you've seen replicated in many places -- he's the guy who took them!

You can truly get lost browsing through Peter Cunningham's photos. You can also read his own documentary essay with photos of an earlier trip he went on to Auchwitz, before the one Dana wrote about.

• Elisa Salasin posted some interesting comments regarding the article on expulsion rates for children in preschool. She also left a link for her Open Letter To Jenna Bush, published on Common Dreams.

Dear Ms. Bush,

I’ve read recently that you will soon be teaching in an urban, Washington, D.C. elementary school. As you begin your career there are a few things that I would like you to consider.

I’m sure that you are entering the profession with the highest of expectations for the children who will be under your care in the coming years, that you are not someone who might fall prey to the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” If possible, though, please take a few moments to think about just what it means to have high or low expectations for your students.

I ask you to do so because I believe that much of the so-called educational reform mandated in the name of “high” expectations truly reflects very low expectations of the intellectual capacities and learning potential of children – most specifically, poor children in urban schools who are usually not white and who often don't speak English as their first language.

This conclusion might seem counter-intuitive. After all, your father claims that No Child Left Behind is closing the achievement gap. He claims that test scores are rising, that more kids are reading at a higher level. I see that achievement gap differently – when teaching and textbooks mirror the tests, scores indeed will rise. In the eyes of some people, high expectations for students are being met. I see the high expectations of the testing/publishing industrial complex being met as their profits soar, and the high expectations of pundits being met as their pockets fatten. Let’s say that I’m wrong, though, and children are indeed learning more in this brave new world of education. We still cannot say that high expectations are being met without taking into account some of the other effects of NCLB on classrooms. A few examples include: students reading fewer actual books in school, far less time being spent on social studies, science, arts education, or any other activity that does not fall within the realm of concepts-to-be-tested.

Read the rest and also check out Elisa's blog, two feet in.

• On the second of my two posts about Olen Burrage, Susan Klopfer posted an excerpt from her forthcoming book Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, due out on June 15. Susan prefaces her excerpt, saying, "Look away from Neshoba County and the "regular" klansmen. So many others were involved ..." I have actually linked to a similar excerpt (scroll down to "Further Reading"), which Susan had posted previously on her website, in order to make precisely her point, that others—including Senator James O. Eastland and Representative Prentiss Walker—are on the chain of responsibility for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Here's part of what Susan posted:

.... Ninety miles away from Neshoba County in Jackson, Sovereignty Commission director Johnston was looking at a possible direct link between Andrew Goodman and "communists." The name "Goodman" had attracted Senator Eastland’s interest, since Goodman had family ties to Pacifica Broadcasting, a progressive, alternative-broadcasting network founded in 1949 by pacifists.

Goodman’s father, Robert, was President of the Pacifica Foundation. One year prior to Andrew Goodman’s death, The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), headed by Senator Eastland, completed a three-year investigation of Pacifica’s programming, looking for "subversion."

In 1962, Pacifica station WBAI was the first station to publicly broadcast former FBI agent Jack Levine's exposé of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. The program was followed by threats of arrests and bombings, as well as pressure from the FBI, the Justice Department, and the FCC. Also that year, Pacifica trained volunteers to travel into the South for coverage of the awakening Civil Rights Movement. The station also took a strong anti-Vietnam war stance, helping to prompt the investigations.

Sovereignty Commission documents in fact show that Eastland knew the names and backgrounds of all volunteer workers in advance of their arrival, including Goodman. Records show the senator requested this information from the Sovereignty Commission well before the opening of Freedom Summer.

On February 26, 1965, Director Johnston wrote a letter to newly elected Congressman Prentiss Walker, requesting that he "ask the HUAC for any information about the Pacifica Foundation of New York…. We have reason to believe this foundation also is subversive."

A good source on the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner is Susan's chapter on that story (scroll down past the web form), currently posted on her website.

Susan is now also keeping two new blogs: Civil Rights Books and Emmett Till. Civil Rights Books is intended as "a forum to share civil rights history in Mississippi." There is already quite a bit of interesting posted there. Susan's Emmett Till Blog promises to soon be a place to go to follow the developments in the new FBI investigation of Emmett Till's murder.

Photo by Peter Cunningham

America vs. Its Young

Youngest Students Most Likely to Be Expelled
Preschoolers' Self-Esteem at Risk, Study Says

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; Page A02

Preschools are expelling youngsters at three times the rate of public schools, according to a nationwide study by Yale researchers, prompting concerns that children are being set up for educational failure at a very young age.

The first nationwide study of expulsion rates in state-supported preschools, scheduled for release today, found that boys are being thrown out of preschool 4 1/2 times as frequently as girls. African American preschoolers are twice as likely to be expelled as white or Latino children, and five times as likely as Asian Americans. Twice as many 5-year-olds face the ultimate sanction for bad behavior as 4-year-olds.

"These 3- and 4-year-olds are barely out of diapers," said Walter Gilliam, an assistant professor of child psychiatry and psychology at Yale University and author of the report "Prekindergarteners Left Behind." He said the lack of support for troubled youngsters could lead parents to "view their child as an educational failure well before kindergarten."

Los Angeles-based child development expert Karen Hill-Scott said the study provided scientific validation for the impression conveyed by the popular television show "Supernanny" "that there are a lot of out-of-control children out there." But she and other experts put much of the blame for the high expulsion rate on teachers and administrators rather than on children.

Child-care experts said that many expulsions could be avoided with better teacher training and greater support from psychologists and social workers. They noted that most states spend less than $5,000 a year per preschooler, compared with average per-pupil spending of more than $9,500 for other students.

(via Steve Gilliard.)

Block Artist

Speaking of children, my two year old has been doing wonderful things with blocks.

On A Related Note: Ethics of Research on States' "Wards"

While I'm touching upon issues relating to children in foster care, I should mention Yvette's recent post at Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Yvette is a doctoral student in Family Social Science, who researches adoptive parenting. In her post, Yvette analyzes the ethical issues surrounding the testing of AIDS drugs on foster children, recently in the news. The children who have been subjects for the drug tests are disproportionately African American.

There has been a lot written recently about the role of race in decision making and actions regarding the remocal of children from their homes and termination of these children's parents' parental rights. One voice in this discussion has been that of Dorothy Roberts, for example in this essay in response to a Frontline program about the child welface system:

White children are the least likely of any group to be supervised by child protective services. Black children make up more than two-fifths of the foster care population, though they represent less than one-fifth of the nation's children. Latino and Native American children are also in the system in disproportionate numbers. The system's racial imbalance is most apparent in big cities where there are sizeable minority and foster care populations.

However, according to Roberts this disparity is likely not just about poverty:

Even though black children are more likely to be poor than white children, racial differences in child poverty rates don't fully explain why black children are placed in foster care at higher rates. Race also influences child welfare decision-making through powerful, deeply embedded stereotypes about black family dysfunction. Black families diverge the most from the parenting ideal embodied in the white, middle-class model composed of married parents and their children. Black mothers are assumed to be irresponsible and difficult to rehabilitate. A number of studies demonstrate that caseworkers, judges, and doctors are more suspicious of non-white parents.

I know of a case of a small pediatric group practice headed by two African American physicians serving a largely Black and low-income client population. These two experienced doctors had become so fed up with emergency room personnel automatically calling social services on their patients that they requested that one of them be called before any hospital staff takes such action in order to provide input, context--even advocacy.

What an unenviable position to find yourself in as a physician: treating your patients by, in part, protecting them from the actions of other physicians.

Read the whole thing.

Dahveed's Voice and Vision: Their past - Our Future - Our Children

Dahveed's blog is an interesting and useful site that focuses on advocacy issues for children, children of color and foster children in particular. Dhaveed aggregates news items in this area and has a good set of links for information and advocacy resources. Dahveed also has a related website, with the same name as his blog, which has more informational resources about children of color in the American foster care system.

And So Should This Comment From Sam Friedman

I sent one of my posts on Ja'eisha Scott to the Civil Rights Movement veterans list-serve that I'm on, and Sam Friedman wrote back with the following:

I think that it might be useful to tell a story here from my life. Shortly after I began kindergarden in 1947 in school-segregated Washington, DC, as a white boy in a middle class school, something upset me and I became hysterical and stayed hysterical.

I was more than the teacher could deal with, so after some minutes they called a policeman to deal with me. It was pretty impressive to confront a cop as a 5 year old. BUT, instead of handcuffs, police cars, and all that, he soothed me and spoke to me in a very friendly fashion. Within a few minutes, I was back in control and back in the class room.

The contrast to this case is obvious. It is also worth realizing that, even though I was treated wonderfully by the policeman, I STILL REMEMBER THE INCIDENT almost 60 years later.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like, and will continue to be like, for the many Black kids who get handcuffed, put in cop cars, and the like.

Sam Friedman was a civil rights activist starting with his attendance at the Second Youth March for Integrated Schools in early 1959. He also was active in the Woolworth protests in 1960 in Washington DC, and in the Glen Echo protests and sit-in in Montgomery County Maryland in the summer of 1960. Thereafter, he was very involved in the movement for years.

Now, he is an AIDS researcher who is an author on over 300 publications in many journals (including Nature, Science, New England J of Medicine, etc.).

This Ought To Be Part Of Discussions Of The Ja'eisha Scott Case

You know, when they start saying knee-jerk stuff about how the problem is Inga Akins' parenting of Ja'eisha.

Tying such dire predictions of social decay to divorce and single motherhood seemed credible in the 1970s and 1980s. But a funny thing happened in the 1990s: Almost every negative social trend tracked by the census, the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Justice declined.

Teen birthrates fell by 30% between 1991 and 2002. The number of violent crimes in schools was halved between 1992 and 2002. Teen homicide rates dropped to their lowest level since 1966. Teen suicides decreased by 25%, and drug abuse, binge drinking and smoking all fell.

Yet the number of couples living together unmarried increased by more than 70% over the decade; the population at large increased by only 13% during this period. Gay and lesbian parenting became more common. The number of families headed by single mothers rose five times faster than the number of married-couple families.

Obviously, attributing the improvements of the 1990s to the continued increases in families headed by single moms is as absurd as blaming all the social ills of the 1980s on divorce.

Single parenthood does increase the risk that teens will get into trouble. But so do poverty, parental conflict, frequent school relocation, parental substance abuse and even an emotionally distant relationship with married parents.

Studies show that the majority of teens who exhibit serious behavior problems have five or more separate risk factors in their lives.

From an op-ed by Stephanie Coontz in the LA Times: OurKids Are Not Doomed (via Alas, A Blog).

Why Haven't They Handcuffed Jennifer Wilbanks And Thrown Her In Jail Already??

Her recent escapades were the second time she's behaved in such a manner.

[T]he fleet-footed bride had fled before. Friends and other relatives of the former flame also confirmed the doomed engagement.

"They had picked out an engagement ring and put it on layaway and were looking at houses to buy together," the former fiancé's wife said.

"They never consummated their relationship," the woman added. "She claimed she wanted to wait [for marriage]. He said he was fine to have sex, but it was her decision."

When Wilbanks suddenly reversed course and dumped him, "He was shocked, and he was hurt," the woman said.

And she has a criminal record (registration required).

Court records show that Wilbanks was arrested three times in that county on shoplifting charges from 1996 to 1998.

In 1996, as district attorney, Sartain prosecuted Wilbanks for allegedly shoplifting $1,740 in merchandise from a Gainesville mall, court records show. Sartain dropped the felony charge after Wilbanks, then 24, completed a pretrial diversion program, the records show. Wilbanks performed 75 hours of community service and paid restitution, according to court records.

Months before that felony arrest, police had charged Wilbanks with misdemeanor shoplifting for allegedly taking $37.05 in merchandise from a Gainesville Wal-Mart. Court records show that officials dismissed the case after Wilbanks completed "Project Turnabout," a six-week counseling program for shoplifters.

In fact, she could use a little rough handling. If the cops don't teach her lesson now, at age 33, by age 40 she'll be knocking off banks and engaged in prostitution. Mark my words...

Let's hope the police investigate Jennifer's parents, too, since Jennifer's misbehavior must surely be reflective of their parenting. I mean how could Mr. and Mrs. Wilbanks give John Mason their blessing for the engagement without telling him about their daughter's history of immoral and criminal behavior?

[L]ast August, Harris Wilbanks got a call from the man his daughter was dating. Could Mr. and Mrs. Wilbanks join him for dinner?

At the dinner, Mason produced a diamond ring. The younger man asked the elder one for permission to marry his daughter.

"He did it the old-fashioned way," Harris Wilbanks recalled. "I couldn't ask for a finer Christian son-in-law."

His daughter eventually moved into Mason's home as the couple prepared for their wedding. As devout Christians, Mason said, they lived chaste lives together, agreeing not to consummate their relationship until they said their vows in front of God and 600 friends April 30.

I bet they knew exactly what their daughter was up to when she "disappeared."

What on earth is wrong with these white, Christian, heterosexual families?

(via Steve Gilliard.)

Stop The Schoolhouse To Jailhouse Track

Between 1992 and 2002, nationwide violent crimes at schools against students aged 12 to18 dropped by 50%.

Between 1994 and 2002, the youth arrest rate for violent crimes has declined 47% nationally.

From 1974 to 2000, the number of students suspended out-of-school increased from 1.7 million to 3.1 million. Research conducted over the past five years has detailed the growing use of suspensions for trivial conduct, much of which is subjectively labeled “disrespect,” “disobedience,” and “disruption.”

While national data is not available, data from various districts indicate the growing trend toward using arrests to address school disciplinary matters. For example, the number of arrests in Philadelphia County schools has increased from 1,632 during the 1999–2000 school year to 2,194 in 2002–2003.

In 2002, of the 4,002 arrests of youths by Houston Independent School District Police, 660, or almost 17%, were for disruption (disruptive activities, disruption of classes, and disruption of transportation). Another 1,041 arrests, or 26%, were for disorderly conduct.

From Stop The Schoolhouse To Jailhouse Track, a website to support the recent Advancement Project report, Schools On Lockdown(PDF).

A Couple Of Good Articles On The Criminalization Of Ja'eisha Scott

Even 5-Year-Olds Have Civil Rights
By Lester Kenyatta Spence*, AOL BlackVoices columnist

I still don’t see how someone can agree with what happened in Florida just because teachers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. But people all over the country are agreeing, and many of them are black people.

Black people who believe in this claptrap are being hoodwinked into believing that our rights are based on something close to black perfection. It isn’t the first time.the civil rights movement would have looked a lot different if Rosa Parks was a single mother with a drinking problem.

Here is a lesson in American Citizenship 101: You do not have to act “right” to be treated like a citizen. You do not have to act “right” to be guaranteed an education. Wake up (emphasis added).

Granted, you can’t break the law, but we’re not talking about law breaking here.

We’re talking about a 5-year-old kid who had a couple of bad days at school. She wasn’t packing. She didn’t threaten to blow up the school. She didn’t get caught with weed in her locker. She wasn’t caught having sex in one of the bathrooms.

She.

Had.

A

Temper.

Tantrum.

That’s IT.

Racism in America has sunk to an all-time low
Baltimore Editorial Staff, The Afro American Newspapers

There must have been a better way to handle that situation.

First, the principal, rather than waiting for the student's mother to come to the school, invited the police to come in and inflame the situation. And the police, rather than reassessing the situation when they saw how quiet the child had become, shackled and "perp walked" the kindergartner, no doubt terrifying the child.

There must have been a better way.

A St. Louis principal was suspended, according to CNN, in a similar situation. The police spokesman in that case said handcuffing 5-year-olds "is not the practice of the department."

"Handcuffing indicates an arrest is being made," said Roxanne Evans of the D.C. Public Schools Office of Communications and Public Information. "In DCPS, a 5-year-old has not yet reached the age of reason to be charged with a crime. Therefore, there would be no reason for a 5-year-old to be handcuffed."

According to Baltimore City Public School System spokeswoman Vanessa Pyatt, the local policy is the use of passive restraint. The policy's description is disseminated annually to families in the "Information Guide for Parents and Students." She said a student would never be handcuffed without having been charged with a crime and being formally under arrest, which has never happened in our system to a 5-year-old.

School police would be called in because policy demands they be notified when situations erupt, but the goal is always that they be handled internally.

Florida apparently has no such policy.

The police procedures used to take that child into custody are reserved for people under arrest, who are violent, dangerous and might pull out a weapon and injure the arresting officer. None of those elements existed; therefore, there must have been another motive for such rash, demonstrative and dramatic action (emphasis added)

"Children need to have hope that they can succeed, and they need family stability and adults they can trust. They also need counseling when trauma affects them," said Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund, in reference to a similar case. "At critical points in their development, however, from birth through adulthood, a disproportionate number of poor children of color lack access to these important keys to healthy development and struggle to compete on an unequal playing field. Many fall inexorably behind. The pipeline to prison robs children of their God-given birthrights to opportunity, fulfillment and self-actualization, making it far more likely that they will end up behind bars" (emphasis added).

*Lester K. Spence is also a blogger over at Vision Circle.

A Little Comparative Analysis From Blackwell Raines

Blackwell Raines left another good comment on Monday, relating the Ja'eisha Scott story to the Jennifer Wilbanks story.

[T]he great charters--Constitution, Bill of Rights--of U.S. democracy can't just be real and consequential for some, and mere half-remembered school history for others. A basic premise in all the talk of government is the dignity of personhood. And yes, this principle extends to the very young, especially to a 5-year old, who cannot speak for themselves, or process through the events of an heavily-handcuffed arrest by three uniformed adults.

This doctrine comes with the expectation that every citizen is to be treated and accorded the equality of respect that comes with being a human being and citizen. It regards each person as an equal unit of importance because that person exist, not because given members of an institution chooses to disqualify certain persons based upon ethnic and socioeconomic grounds. . . .

A state away, over the weekend, a middle class white female was reported to have petpetuated a hoax: runaway bride: "bride-to-be gets cold feet," decides to disappear. Kidnapping was suspected, and later with the surfacing of the would-be bride, an alleged fabricated story was told to authorities. The search for the missing bride had involved 100 people on various government levels. Yet, upon learning of the fabrication, and seeing the bride-to-be arrive safely back in her hometown, there has been little criticism. In a carefully crafted statement, the police, called the experience most stressing--that is, for the bride-to-be. No charges have been filed the 32-year-old.

Institutions have long memories, and carry out their own aims and goals. The 5-year-old, acting up in kindergarten, is quickly claimed as disposable. The 32-year-old is deemed valued, and even criticism of her actions is muted, despite learning her disappearance a hoax. Accordingly, we're told the 32-year-old needs to have private time with her family, given the stress of it all. (Part of her disappearance was to Vegas.)

Two headline-grabbing examples, with the dignity of personhood being honored in one case, and summarily dismissed in the other, despite one being a very young child. But both are female.

In both instances, the institutions made judgment calls--they expressed harsh, severe reaction based upon the perceived social value of one person, while with the other, expressions of leniency, sympathetic support and even empathy, applying a different social value.

Interesting to note, there exist another disparity between the stories, on a different level: the 32-year-old received no heavy negative commentary of having been spoiled, of being overly privileged, or simply, of being too selfish, although much had been spent and scheduled for her Saturday wedding, and equally, much expense given in searching for her. . . .

Criticisms leveled against the mother of the 5-year-old are also anecdotal, and worst. They are too ready, too often, to cavalierly dismiss the brutalization of a 5-year-old as of no real consequence, a necessary function of order. They provide the strawperson argument that protests against criminalization and brutalization of minorites by institutions is, in reality, no more than an attempt to manufacture cover for wrongdoing. Even an excuse for malcontents.

It should be note that brutalization and criminalization is rarely defined by the administering of physical blows. This is why adults can win litigation efforts after citing "mental anguish" and "emotional abuse."

And Then There's That Special Genre Of Purposeful Abuse By Educators

The latest one I've heard about was in Queens, NY (via Laurence at Blogging While Black):

Haitian Children Forced to Eat Like Animals

It's the kind of spat that flares thousands of times a day in schools all over the country.

But at Public School 34 in Queens Village, Assistant Principal Nancy Miller's ghastly way of handling a minor scuffle between two Haitian fourth-graders has sparked fury.

According to parents and students, Miller, who is white, chose to punish all 13 Haitian pupils in the school's only fourth-grade bilingual class - even though just two were involved in the March 16 incident.

She ordered all 13 to sit on the cafeteria floor, then made them use their fingers to eat their lunch of chicken and rice, while all the other students watched.

"In Haiti, they treat you like animals, and I will treat you the same way here," several students recalled Miller saying.

http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/queensoutrage.html
http://lefthook.org/Politics/JG041305.html

This one is a close cousin of the one about the abusive treatment of African American siblings at Tyrone Elementary School, in Pinellas County, FL.

So, Yes, It's Not Only Florida

Florida has a particularly abysmal record when it comes to criminalizing small children, but the problem is actually a national epidemic. In the last couple of years, there have been a number of other stories about children under twelve being handcuffed. This list is just what I culled quickly from Zero Intelligence, a group blog "dedicated to keeping an eye on, and pointing out the excesses of, bad school policies and actions . . . [with] a particular focus on zero tolerance policies." I'm sure a serious Google session would yield more . . .

• Williamsburg, VA: Police Arrest 8-Year-Old After Alleged Outburst in Williamsburg Elementary School

The four-foot pupil was led away from Williamsburg's Rawls Byrd Elementary School in handcuffs Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery.

• Ocala, FL: Boys arrested for stick figure drawings

Two Florida students, one 9 years old and the other 10 years old, were arrested and taken out of school in handcuffs. They are being charged with "making a written threat to kill or harm another person", a felony.

One drawing showed the two boys standing on either side of the other boy and "holding knives pointed through" his body, according to a police report. The figures were identified by written names or initials.

• Tuscaloosa, AL: County officials defend handcuffing

Deputy Antonio Bostic handcuffed a 9-year-old fourth-grader at Holt Elementary School (in the Tuscaloosa County School System). This action followed a non-violent verbal argument between the student and her gym teacher and was apparently done to "teach the girl a lesson". Toniko L. Alexander, the girls mother, sued and the County is busy defending the officer's actions.

Another teacher overheard the argument from across the gymnasium and ordered the student to come speak with her, according to the complaint.

While the girl was walking to the teacher, Bostic intervened and ordered her to come speak with him, insisting that he handle the situation when the other teacher said she could take care of it.

According to the complaint, Bostic stood the girl in a doorway, placed handcuffs on her and told her: “This is what happens to people when they break the law," and “This is how it feels to be in jail."

The girl remained handcuffed for 10 minutes while her classmates looked on. Since this happened she has a fear of law enforcement officials in general and Bostic in particular. The complaint also claims that she suffered "internal bleeding, bruising, severe personal embarrassment, public humiliation and continuing mental anguish, including nightmares and crying spells".

• Houston, TX: 11 year-old girl arrested at school for shoving match that happened a week previous

It started as a shoving incident, and then one of the two girls was suspended for two days. But then parents of the girl who wasn't suspended simply were not satisfied with Cy-Fair's punishment so they filed a complaint and had the other student arrested.
...
The 11-year-old girl was arrested, handcuffed, photographed and fingerprinted after she was picked up from Walker Elementary. She and her mom say there had been a shoving incident last week. She says the other girl wound up with a bloody nose, that she was suspended for two days and thought it would end there.

The increases in these kinds of cases occurs at the same time that violent crime in schools has dropped dramatically in the last decade. Here's Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund:

Increased criminalization of children is occurring despite a recent federal report that shows violent crime in schools fell 50 percent between 1992 and 2002. The growing reliance on police and courts to manage children with mental health, behavioral, learning and other issues merits the attention of parents, educators, faith leaders, and lawmakers. We must prevent the juvenile justice system from continuing as a dumping ground for poor and minority children with serious emotional and behavioral problems. Minority youth make up 34 percent of the adolescent population but 62 percent of youth in detention. (Emphasis added.)

They Kept Ja'eisha Cuffed In Their Cruiser For Hours After Her Mom Arrived

The weird thing is the details have only just come out in the course of a new story about a 10 year-old boy who was handcuffed in Allentown, PA for getting into a fight on a school bus. At a couple points in the article, Monica Lewis, of BlackAmericaWeb.com, gets commentary from Ja'eisha Scott' and Inga Akins' lawyer, C.K. Hoffler. Here's what comes out:

According to Hoffler, Ja’eisha was not only handcuffed, but had shackles placed on her feet and left in the backseat of a police vehicle for hours, even though she was calm at the time of her arrest. Her mother, Inga Akins, had also arrived at the scene after the arrest, but police would not immediately release Ja’eisha. They sought to press assault charges, which the Florida state attorney denied, Hoffler said, adding that St. Petersburg police requested that Ja’eisha be committed to a mental ward and asked that she be taken from her mother’s custody when the institutionalization request went nowhere.

“You’ve got to emphasize that this is a five-year-old kindergartener,” Hoffler said. “It’s just horrific.” (Emphasis added.)

What's Race Got To Do With It?

The central problem with ALL of the news reports on the Ja'eisha Scott case and with almost all of the commentary is that the case gets viewed as an isolated incident. The reports and discussion turn over the various bits of available information about what happened to opine on the behavior of Ja'eisha Scott, the parenting of Inga Akins, the conduct of teachers Christina Ottersbach and Patti Tsaousis and Assistant Principal Nicole Dibenedetto, the necessity or lack thereof of police in this particular case, and the right or wrong of handcuffing the girl.

Respected groups, like the local chapters of the NAACP and the SCLC, are "cautious on the subject of race, which has crept into the debate over the girl's treatment because she is black."

Black leaders noted that Mark Williams - the veteran police officer heard on the video confronting the girl and directing the handcuffing - is black. So is the school's principal and the police sergeant who arrived on the scene later and put an end to talk that the girl be prosecuted.

Rouson described Williams as a respected member of the community and noted the girl had previous problems at school.

This sort of discussion of racism is about the motivations of individuals. But analyzing a situation for racism is not just about deciding if an individual is behaving in a racist way. It's also about analyzing institutionalized inequalities.

The only public statement I've read that touches upon the institutionalized dimensions of racism is from the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, which is based in St. Petersburg.

"We believe that this act is a symptom of a system with longstanding hostility toward African children," said Uhuru leader Chimurenga Waller, reading from a prepared statement. "Furthermore this hostility has its roots in the desegregation of schools and the subsequent failure to educate African children in Pinellas County."

Readers may wonder what the Uhurus are talking about because none of the news reports:

• mention the alarming number of children under 12 being arrested in the state of Florida as a whole;
• acknowledge that Pinellas County leads the state in these incidents;
• mention that African American children are grossly over-represented among young children who get arrested;
• deem it relevant that Pinellas County has been hit with a class action lawsuit for not educating its African American students; or
• mention other incidents where it appears students have been targeted for abuse by administrators and teachers for no other reason than being African American.

In Pinellas County, Florida, it is standard procedure to call the police on small children who are having behavior problems. It is standard procedure to charge children in Pinellas County with felonies. It is standard procedure in Pinellas County to handcuff children as a means of discipline . It is standard procedure in Pinellas County to use police, criminal charges, and handcuffs disproportionately on African American children: 55% of children under 12 charged with crimes in fiscal year 1999-2000 were African American, though they were only 20.95% of the school age children in the state.

It is standard procedure in Pinellas County, Florida to ignore the cultural differences between African American children and white, European American children and to run schools geared only towards education of the the latter.

On June 23, 1992, thirty-two retiring African American teachers were interviewed by Peggy Peterman, a St. Petersburg Times journalist. Twenty-one years after desegregation they reported that there continued to be a dearth of black role models in the schools and a climate of cultural tensions. They observed that many white teachers are afraid of black students, and black students do not feel comfortable in the predominantly white schools. Even Howard Hinesley, superintendent of schools, acknowledged that whites don't have a significant understanding or appreciation for differences in cultures and a respect for African Americans. "We have culturally ignored some of the issues that bother the (black) students," reported Hinesley. The school board undermined the ability of African American community to transmit its cosmology through the school and endangered African American students by not addressing cultural differences between blacks and whites. The burden of desegregation fell unequally on African American children.

That was the state of things in 1992, but a 2003 study shows that institutionalized racial discrimination is still alive and well in the Pinellas County schools:

Parents alleging in a lawsuit that Pinellas schools discriminate against black students have added new specifics to their claim.

A consultant hired by the plaintiffs concluded that FCAT scores are as much as 28 points lower for blacks than whites, that black students are not promoted at the same rate as white students, and that black students are 3.8 times more likely to be disciplined.

By the time the police arrive and handcuff Ja'eisha it does not matter what color the officers are. Her treatment takes place in a context of persistent inequality and especially punitive attitudes towards African American students. The three white police officers who handcuffed Ja'eisha merely enacted the existing physical and psychological brutality of the school system's white makes right atmosphere. The presence of an African American police officer overseeing the handcuffing does not mitigate the racism inherent in the event.

If this way of talking is a little too abstract for some, let me put it another way. Institutionalized racism promotes individual acts of racism. As an illustration of this principle, take Janice Arthur's complaint that Tyrone Elementary School educators routinely harass her grandchildren, Treazure and Erskine, who are African American. Arthur's complaints are numerous and deeply upsetting—many detailing physical abuse and purposeful neglect of the two children. Among Arthur's allegations is one that a teacher called Erskine a monkey in front of his classmates. The teacher admitted to having done so, and though he was disciplined (how and to what extent is not clear), Area III Superintendent Michael Bissette minimized the incident, saying

It was not the worse [sic] of swear words.

In a climate where the needs of African American students are not on the agenda of the school system, and where school superintendents do not take it seriously when teachers direct racial epithets at their students, racist teachers feel free to abuse African American students. No one tells teachers to behave badly, but they do in a permissive atmosphere. Among the other allegations that Janice Arthur has made are:

• Treazure being suspended for choking a classmate, although she denied the incident. The victim recently confessed Treazure was merely hugging her but she was told by a teacher to say Treazure choked her.
• Children being allowed to hit Treazure, but when she retaliates, she is the only one disciplined. Last week, she was hit in the head with a rock.
• Erskine, who has cerebral palsy, being forced to wear wet clothes all day after being caught in a downpour while walking from one building to another during a recent rainstorm.
• Erskine being forced to participate in a regular physical education class where he is made to run laps despite notes from his physician stating it is causing discomfort and pain in his legs.

Tyrone Elementary School is also in Pinellas County. Michael Bissette, who does not think it's a big deal when teachers direct racial epithets at their students, also oversees Fairmount Park Elementary School. When the Ja'eisha Scott story first broke in mid-March, before the video was released, Bissette was heard making odd excuses for why Fairmount Park called city police instead of district campus police to deal with Ja'eisha Scott:

The assistant principal was in the process of just that [i.e., calling district campus police], he said, but another in a series of outbursts by the girl interrupted her in mid call. When she asked the secretary to call for help, the secretary called city police instead.

This early statement conflicts directly with the April 29 St. Petersburg Times, in which police Chief Chuck Harmon gave "the most detailed account so far of how police came to be called to the school."

On March 14, the day of the taping, the school called city police again after Pinellas schools police could not come.

In the earlier article, no one ever called the district campus police. In the later article, the school called, but district campus police could not come. What the two accounts have in common is that they both deflect responsibility from Assistant Principal Nicole Dibenedetto, who, according to the police report, was disappointed when charges were not made against Ja'eisha Scott.

Could there be a cover up? Are there African American children at Fairmount Park who have been treated like Janice Arthur's grandchildren at Tyrone Elementary? How many arrests and handcuffings of children under twelve have there been at Fairmount Park? I do not know, but concerned citizens should demand some answers.

Examine existing evidence? Ask more questions about what actually happened? Silly me. It's so much easier to sit back and blame Inga Akins and Ja'eisha Scott. Why would anyone want to do anything else?

Famed Attorney Willie Gary and His Partner CK Hoffler Fight on Behalf of Five-Year-Old Ja'eisha Scott, Who was Handcuffed and Shackled By Police Officers

Monday May 2, 6:22 pm ET
Gary and Hoffler Demand Change from the Pinellas County School District And Police Department in Handling Children
Legal Team Condemn Civil Rights Violations and Police Brutality

STUART, Fla., May 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Prominent attorney Willie E. Gary and his partner CK Hoffler of the Florida-based law firm of Gary, Williams, Parenti, Finney, Lewis, McManus, Watson and Sperando P.L., announced today that they represent five-year-old Ja'eisha Scott, who was handcuffed and shackled by the St. Petersburg County Police Department after having a temper tantrum at school. Gary and his legal team plan to expose the blatant cruel and unusual punishment suffered by their client. Gary and his legal team also call for the police department and the Pinellas County School District to undergo significant reform so that no other child will be handcuffed and shackled for behavioral challenges. In fact, Gary and Hoffler intend to appeal to police departments nationwide to address police brutality against children.

"It is truly unfortunate that an incident like this could happen in today's society," said Hoffler. "There is no excuse for handcuffing and placing shackles on a five-year-old child as a means of discipline.

"It is obvious that this young girl is facing some challenges and handcuffing her, placing shackles on her feet and allowing her to remain in a police car for hours, shackled, is not the answer to her problem," continued Hoffler. "In this instance, the punishment does not fit the conduct of the child and, without a doubt, the police used excessive force and violated this child's civil and human rights."

Both national and international civil rights and human rights leaders as well as state and federal legislators have galvanized to address the atrocity of what happened to Ja'eisha Scott.

"This type of oppression forces us to reflect on the values of this country and the civil rights Rosa Parks fought for," said Gary. "We are seeking justice. It's not right and we intend to do something about it. This issue should be of concern to every parent, mother and father in America because if we allow law enforcement to treat a five-year-old child with behavioral issues as if she were a convicted felon, what's next?"

Gary and his firm are no strangers to seeking justice. They are noted for winning a $240 million verdict in a case against the Walt Disney Corporation for his clients who alleged Disney stole their idea for a sports theme park. In 2001, a jury awarded Gary a $139.6 million verdict for the Maris Distributing Company against Anheuser Busch. In addition, Gary was given a half-billion dollar verdict in Jackson, Mississippi, against the Loewen Group, a large Canadian funeral home chain.

SOURCE Gary, Williams, Parenti, Finney, Lewis, McManus, Watson and Sperando P.L. (Emphasis added.)

Criminalizing Children In Florida

These things DO happen to little white girls, too. For example, in 1999, a similar thing happened to Samantha Long, when she was 8.

Samantha was . . . a third-grader who weighed about 60 pounds and has attention deficit disorder and other conditions. She was accused of pushing a teacher's aide, and taken to a "secure seclusion room," a common feature in SED classes. Each of these closet-sized rooms has white walls, a small glass window that can be covered with paper and a safety lock on the door. The idea is to let children throw their tantrums inside, away from sights and sounds that might make them even more aggravated and out of control.

Samantha, dressed in the school's navy and white uniform, didn't want to go into the room. She complained when the teacher's aide who was taking her to the room started removing Samantha's pink-and-white sneakers. She kicked and screamed.

Those kicks earned her an arrest on a felony charge of battery on a school official and a trip to the Juvenile Assessment Center in handcuffs, according to a police report. Samantha was eventually put in a pre-trial diversion program, and told to help her mother around the house.

Indeed, Ja'eisha's story is far from unique. In the fiscal year 1999-2000 4,575 children under 12 were charged with crimes in Florida. That number does not include children like Jai'eisha who are punitively threatened by police and handcuffed but not charged with any crime. Before we even get to the question or race, we've got to wonder why NONE of the news reports place Ja'eisha's story in the context of statewide policies that criminalize children.

In recent decades, the Florida Legislature has toughened its juvenile justice laws. It has pumped up Florida's boot camps and vowed that kids would be punished, not coddled, by a newly formed Department of Juvenile Justice. . . .

This overall crackdown -- largely aimed at teens -- also has had an impact on younger children. . . .

Although a normal battery would be a misdemeanor, the Legislature decided in 1986 that students who commit this same crime against a school employee should be guilty of a felony. School employees can include teachers, aides, bus drivers and others.

The law may make sense when you imagine a 150-pound high school student slugging his spindly math instructor.

But the same law applied to Ruben Toledo, when he was 7 years old and 65 pounds.

And to a 6-year-old boy arrested at Sutherland Elementary School in Palm Harbor in May 1999. He slapped a teacher in the face, knocking off her glasses, and kicked two teachers in the shins. An officer tried to read the boy his rights, but stopped because "I don't feel that he fully understood them." The 6-year-old was arrested and taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center.

This is the legal architecture for turning small children into felons, but Florida's educational and juvenile justice systems go further, restraining small children with handcuffs during interventions to "help" or "protect" them or when administering basic discipline.

Not every change in the juvenile justice system has been designed to punish young criminals more. Over the past decade, the state has set up 17 Juvenile Assessment Centers, or JACs, designed to meet children's needs better.

At these centers, officials can check arrest and school records, and they have time to ask the youths about substance abuse and mental health issues. It's a first step toward getting at the root causes of kids' troubles, an approach hailed by child advocates.

The irony is that when kids are transported to a JAC, they usually come in handcuffs. In Pinellas, that's the center's policy for all delinquent kids -- even if they're 6 or 7. An 8-year-old Pinellas Park boy last month was restrained in a "hobble," a device that encircled his ankles and connected them to a pair of handcuffs behind his back. . . .

The same philosophy applies in schools, when disruptive children need to be removed from class, said David W. Friedberg, director of security services for Hillsborough County schools. He said handcuffing children "is not being done in a punitive sense. . . ."

Fifteen states have taken a different approach entirely, by adopting laws that prevent children under a certain age from being formally charged and prosecuted in juvenile court. In North Carolina, no one under 6 can be charged; in 11 states, the minimum age for prosecution is 10.

But Florida has no minimum age.

I can think of no way to justify this application of Florida law to make it easier to charge children under 12 with felonies. But the liberal use of handcuffs for simple discipline or when transporting children to Juvenile Assessment Centers is an equally serious problem. This heinous practice sends the message to children that all deviations from rules and expectations are, in reality, criminal behavior. You don't ever have to be one of the handcuffed children to understand that to disobey or disappoint is criminal.

Linda Osmundson of the Center Against Spouse Abuse, which is one of the partners in Peacemakers, a Pinellas County anti-violence program for children, has said,

If we can figure out how to teach children at that age to express their needs with their words, and with positive actions and not violent actions, we may be planting a seed that affects them through their life.

When school officials and police handcuff children who express their needs through acting out, the adults teach the children that their needs are illegitimate and criminal. Handcuffing also plants a seed that affects children throughout their lives—a poisonous seed planted by a state that hates its children.

---
Photo: Samantha Long, 9, works on her homework with her mom, Linda. (St. Petersburg Times)

RELATED POST:
What's Race Got To Do With It?

"I think they were good people . . . [Ja'eisha] didn't act like that over here."

Yesterday's SP Times ran an article titled "Ire aimed at handcuffed girl's mother." The article is in four sections, the first of which reports on public attitudes towards Inga Akins and Ja'eisha Scott. In doing so, the article treats us to an array of attacks on Inga Akins' character and parenting, attacks based only on conjecture. The second section of the article excerpts sentence-long sound bites from a second appearance that Inga Akins and Ja'eisha made on A Current Affair last week.

Curiously, the second half the article, which turns towards investigative reporting and factual information, runs counter to the theme of its title. In the foruth section, Thomas C. Tobin reports on a trip to the apartment complex where Inga Akins was living with her three children at the time St. Petersberg Police handcuffed Ja'eisha in March.

Several of Akins' former neighbors at the apartment complex said they didn't know her well because she left early for work and came home late.

"She was a "good morning, good afternoon' kind of person," said Mariveth Rodriguez, 34, a stay-at-home mom whose children sometimes played with Akins' children.

Neighbors said they did not consider Akins' oldest girl a discipline problem.

Rodriguez said Akins' two daughters sometimes came to play with her children on the back patio, and "they were very well-behaved."

She said she is disturbed by talk-show pundits who have criticized Akins' parenting skills.

"I think they were good people," she said. Asked about the 5-year-old's tantrum, Rodriguez said, "she didn't act like that over here."

In a police report on the handcuffing, officers said Akins arrived at the school March 14, stormed to one of the police cruisers and yelled, "Why is my daughter in a police car?"

Officers said they twice directed the upset mother away from school officials they were trying to interview. The girl's great-grandparents also showed up at the school and argued with police.

Officers eventually released the girl to Akins.

In the second to last section of the article, Tobin unearths some other information about Inga Akins' background. Her daughter Ja'eisha is the big sister to a 4 year old brother and 3 year old sister. Inga Akins is a single mother and works as a certified nursing assistant at a Seminole retirement complex. In 2002, Akins had trouble with a misdemeanor charge and some missed court appearances, which led to her being investigated by the state Department of Children and Families. According to Akins, she passed the DCF review.

In March, at the time when Ja'eisha was handcuffed, Akins was facing an eviction notice, which seems to be related to difficulties she was having with subsidized rent payments from the St. Petersburg Housing Authority. Pinellas County court records show that Akins has been unable to collect child support payments from the two men who fathered her children.

The picture of Inga Akins that emerges is of a young woman who had her first child when she was only 19 years old and has been struggling to make it as a single mother of three small children. She holds down a regular job. Her neighbors have nothing negative to say about her. The mother of children who play with Ja'eisha and her sister says Inga's children are well behaved.

Inga has probably displayed some poor judgment in getting involved with men who are now absentee fathers to her children. It was most certainly poor judgment to give A Current Affair exclusive rights to her story. In the latter case, however, I would surmise that the producers of the TV tabloid took advantage of Inga's financial difficulties and her embattled position, with few allies and advocates to support her and give voice to her position in her and her daughter's conflict with Fairmont Park Elementary School.

When Akins heard a week before the handcuffing incident that Fairmont Park had called in a police officer who threatened Ja'eisha with handcuffs, Akins told the school to stay away from her daughter. When Akins arrived at Fairmont Park on March 14 and found her daughter in the back of a police car, she yelled at school officials. These are responses of a parent who is appropriately protective of her daughter.

Recall the comments of clinical psychologist Patricia J. Shiflett:

"A normal tantrum would be verbal refusal to obey, to cry or scream and to do that for a brief period of time, maybe five or 10 minutes . . ."

This was "an example of extreme fight or flight," a response in which "you either run from or you fight with what you perceive as dangerous . . ."

Could it be possible that Inga Akins was doing a fine job parenting Ja'eisha Scott, despite challenging circumstances? Could it be possible that Ja'eisha is a perfectly pleasant, generally well-behaved little girl in most situations? Is it possible that when she was at Fairmount Park, Ja'eisha faced hostilities from teachers and/or the assistant principal that made the five year old reactive in ways that she had no cause to be elsewhere?

There are many more facts to suggest yes on all counts than there is evidence of any deficiencies in Akins' parenting or Ja'eisha's character.

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What's Race Got To Do With It?

Accounts Of Police Involvement In Ja'eisha Scott Case Raise New Questions About Assist. Principal Dibenedetto's Intent

On Wednesday, St. Petersburg, FL Police Chief Chuck Harmon gave the fullest account so far of how police ended up at Fairmount Park Elementary School on March 14, 2005.

On March 7, a week before the handcuffing, Officer [Mark] Williams [who is Black] left his business card at Fairmount during a call unrelated to the girl.

The next day, school officials were struggling with disciplining Akins' daughter, Harmon said. They tried to call Akins and the girl's grandmother. They also tried to call Pinellas schools police, he said.

Getting no response, they called city po