A Conspiracy Against Children: Exactly who is out of control?

Every so often I run across a news article describing some seemingly over-the-top law enforcement act involving a child, which invariably is described as necessary by officials in order to "protect" either the child or others nearby. Admittedly, many of these news stories seem to make it appear that such actions are justified. But when I began to undertake a quick review of how often such examples occur, I realized that we may be ignoring a pretty large elephant standing in the middle of the room.

Here are just a few recent examples I quickly found. In the aggregate, they seem to suggest a sea-change in the way we are dealing with our children in America.

10-year-old Missouri Boy Handcuffed after "Disruptive" Behavior

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO - A 10-year-old boy is back with his parents after police handcuffed him when he became combative this week at school.

Cape Girardeau police say they handcuffed the boy for his protection and that of the officer who took him to juvenile detention.

Police say the boy faces juvenile court proceedings for assault, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

Police say the boy became disruptive after lunch on Tuesday, and swore at his principal and began punching him. When a police officer was called, the boy began threatening and punching him.

more...

And...

13-year-old girl handcuffed aboard a Pinellas school bus

ST. PETERSBURG - Prosecutors have officially ruled out criminal charges against the 13-year-old girl handcuffed aboard a Pinellas school bus last month.

The decision came after a review of the videotape showing the Nov. 11 incident.

"We found no evidence to support criminal charges," Bruce Bartlett, chief assistant in the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office, said Friday...

The incident happened along a Safety Harbor roadside. Rolon, 43, boarded the bus after a student threw a hard object, believed to be a golf ball, out a window. The object caused a car to swerve and nearly hit Rolon's motorcycle as he drove home from work.

A videotape from the bus shows Rolon walking to the back after Mitchell stands and shouts she was not the student he was looking for. The tape shows Rolon twisting Ashley's arm behind her back and marching to the front.

"I don't play. ... I don't play," he says.

Rolon handcuffed Ashley to the railing in the bus stairwell and continued asking questions. A 13-year-old boy later confessed to throwing the object.

More...

A video of the incident can be seen here.

And...

11-year-old boy Handcuffed and Arrested, Later Released

A Joplin police officer involved in the arrest of an 11-year-old boy at an elementary school last year has been fired...

On Nov. 15 of last year, Ward went to Eastmorland Elementary to question an 11-year-old boy about an incident a few days earlier outside a Joplin movie theater. The boy is said to have spit on Ward's son after being teased. Ward questioned the boy in the principal's office, then called Ron Buchanan, a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) officer assigned to the school.

The boy was handcuffed and taken to juvenile authorities, who immediately alerted the boy's parents, saying that they had no jurisdiction over the youth and that he was too young to have been arrested in the first place.

Continuing with another bizarre account...

8-year-old girl handcuffed in her classroom by police

According to police, the incident started Tuesday morning while an officer conducted a welfare check on the third-grade girl.

Phoenix police spokeswoman Sgt. Lauri Williams said the girl was reportedly running down the middle of a street and was almost hit by a car.

Williams said that at the request of the girl's mother, the child was handcuffed before the mother drove her to school with the officer following them.

Williams said Friday that she didn't have complete details about the incident but that police were conducting an investigation to see if excessive force was used.

more...

And this very disturbing account...

Third-grade Student Handcuffed, Drugged In School

School officials in Arizona are in trouble and parents are seething, after a third-grade girl was reportedly brought to school in handcuffs, then forced to take pills.

"This never should have happened. This child never should have been brought into a classroom full of kids." Parents at a PTA meeting are asking some tough questions after a third-grade girl arrives at school Tuesday in handcuffs.

Teachers watched in horror. "We saw it. We are appalled by it and that is all we could really do."

Tami Davis' little girl is still talking about it. "She told me they brought her in handcuffs, kicking and screaming, then they handcuffed her feet, and we were told not to talk about it, and that's basically what she told me."

Students claim the little girl was so distraught, the school psychologist forced pills down her throat. "I understand medicines were used that were totally illegal and should have never been there..."

An investigation is underway, but there is already some fallout. The principal and psychologist were placed on administrative leave.

more...

Wait, it gets better!!!

Autistic 15-Year-Old Tasered, Arrested At Florida School

FT. MYERS, Fla. -- A school resource officer is being accused of excessive force after using a taser on an autistic student. Now, that boy's mother says a misunderstanding has left her child confused and bruised.

Dennis is autistic and functions at the level of a six-year-old. But at 5'8" tall and 220 pounds, his mother, Susan Caliguri, said he is big but harmless. So she was shocked to get a call from Cypress Lake High School saying he was acting out. When she got to the school, she was horrified.

"It was a nightmare. They had him handcuffed, his legs were tied, he was on the ground. They had four sheriffs on top of him. I mean, he is bruised down his back, they were stunning him and he was already down. He couldn't do anything," she said.

Susan calls it excessive force, but the Lee County Sheriff's Office said the taser was the only way to calm him down...

School administrators said Dennis got upset after being told not to come to school one day last week. He misunderstood and thought he was in trouble and started throwing papers.

Despite his mother's concerns, Dennis was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace and resisting arrest.

Here is an article that describes the following:

- On October 20 of last year, Miami-Dade county police officers used a Taser to subdue a six-year-old Pharr Elementary School student.

- May 8, a 9-year-old girl was Tasered in Arizona by a South Tucson police sergeant. Police responded to a call from the Arizona Children's Home, a facility for special needs children.

Here are some ATS Threads on similar incidents:

NEWS: 5 Year Old Girl Arrested, Handcuffed Following Outburst

NEWS: 10 Young Students Strip-Searched in Texas

NEWS: Tuscon Police Officer uses Taser on Nine year old Girl

Update on Handcuffing of 5 Year old with Videos

Officer suspended after using taser on 13 year old girl...twice

And here is this timely article on Supreme Court Nominee Alito:

Alito defends police strip search of 10-year-old girl on warrant to search the home of a suspected narcotics dealer.

What is going on? Again, I ask, who is out of control?

What impact do you think these events have on the children in question? What lesson do you think these events impart upon other children who witness this type of law enforcement behavior? Is it deterrence? Or fear of the State?

As a society, how have we come to accept such law enforcement responses as appropriate for children????

Then there are these disturbing facts...

More that 100,000 children in the United States are in juvenile detention. ( Source. )

In addition, over 250,000 youth are charged as adults every year in the United States. ( Source. )

Returning to the issue of juvenile detentions:

2000 youth in juvenile detention are injured each month, and nearly 1,000 per month commit suicidal acts. ( Source. )

In a report released in 2004 to a U.S. Senate’s Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, it was revealed that in a six month period, nearly 15,000 incarcerated youth waited for community mental health services. Each night, nearly 2,000 youth wait in detention for community mental health services, representing 7% of all youth held in juvenile detention. Thousands of Children with Mental Illness Warehoused in Juvenile Detention Centers Awaiting Mental Health Services

Oh, and when they do get the mental health services they need, you can find dozens of stories like this one...

Abused, drugged and unprotected: Mentally ill children suffer in state-paid centers

At Ohio psychiatric centers, workers molested children, denied them food or gave them alcohol and drugs. Some kids suffered broken bones. Others lived in homes so dirty they urinated on the floor by their beds.

Taxpayers shell out $160 to $1,000 a day for each mentally ill child who lives in these private treatment centers.

But a Cincinnati Enquirer investigation reveals that kids don't always get the help they're promised. Some struggle just to survive.

"You have kids secluded, restrained and injured over and over again," says Carolyn Knight, director of the Ohio Legal Rights Service, a state-funded agency that investigates how children are treated inside facilities.

"It's like Dante's Inferno: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'"

Whether a child ends up in a troubled treatment center or one that helps is largely a gamble, state records and interviews show. A review of the 10 largest facilities statewide shows that conditions were so bad in the past three years that the government ordered three not to admit new children and a fourth to stop putting kids in seclusion.

more...

Are you sick to your stomach yet?

I am.

This is America!!! What are we thinking???

And then you have to recall this...

US detains children at Guantanamo Bay

...or the fact that nearly half of the states in our country have no minimum age requirement for the death penalty. ( Source. )

In forty-two states and under federal law, the commission of a serious crime by children under eighteen—indeed in some states children as young as ten—transforms them instantly into adults for criminal justice purposes. Children who are too young to buy cigarettes legally, boys who may not have started to get facial hair, kids who still have stuffed animals on their beds, are tried as adults, and if convicted, receive adult prison sentences, including life without parole (LWOP).

:shk:

We are pathetic... What I have posted here only scratches the surface of what I found in a few short hours of research.

WE ARE TALKING ABOUT CHILDREN!!! And yet, it is clear to me that so few care...

What say you? Who is out of control here? The children or us????



[edit on 25-4-2006 by loam]

Originally posted by loam
Are you sick to your stomach yet?

Yes Loam, I did actually feel like I was going to puke as I read your post. The question I have been asking myself for the last two years since I realized the true depth of the problem we are facing is what can be done?
Many pull their children from school and teach them not to trust LEO simply because of the uniform like I do, but this is not enough.

What can be done? Do you have a solution, a way to fight back? I personally would kill anyone attempting to do some of the above things to my children, but not everyone is prepared to make that level of sacrifice (I am a Christian; I don’t fear death at the hands of an evil cop.) I think the question isn’t so much what we can do in our lives (although what we do in our lives about this is important) but what we can do on a larger scale.

It all comes down to your views about the state. When you allow the state to do whatever they want, and we do as a nation, this is what you get. The problem is much larger than children, it stems from our reaction (or lack of) to abuse of power as a society.

Thank you for writing this, I am going to print it out and hand it to my parents next time they criticize me for pulling my children out of school.

You have voted loam for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.


I have only been compelled to click the way above button a few times, you deserve it.

This seems to be early indoctrination - teaching children that they have no power, and no rights. It will make for a compliant and easy-to-control adult population.


BTW - a Way Above from me too loam. You deserve it.

This has been concerning me for some time and I don't even have kids of my own. Just listening to stories from my friends regarding the poor judgement and outright negligence of what some of the kids I know are facing makes me ill. Many of the stories I hear honestly sound like instead of knowing how to deal with children, school officials get away with baiting and taunting them over minor infractions and are causing situations to escalate instead of diffussing them.

Anyway, it played a major role in DH & I deciding one week before completing the course to qualify for foster to adopt (we were going to take older kids and were willing to take siblings) that I couldn't possibly deal with it. Half the parents I know are battling the schoold right now, and I know their children, they are normal good kids. If they are having so many problems with the schools, what could I expect with children who had serious issues? Certainly not any understanding or help.

For example, an extremely concientious 7 year old who has volunteered for monitor duty. It causes her to be 10 minutes late for whatever follows in her schedule and she is being publicly shamed for tardiness. This is downright traumatizing for this child who prides herself on perfection in whatever she does. What the hey?

Here's another, a 13 year old who is being harrassed by another student. The child is ADD and has a hard time not defending himself (controlling retaliation). The parents report it for weeks and the school does nothing, meanwhile they are nightly having to drum it into his head he can't retaliate. When it finally becomes physical (by the harrasser) the victim gets hauled away for defending himself and the aggressor gets nothing. What the hey?

By the way, hauled away in this school means taken into custody by the "system", the parents get a phone call that their child is no longer under their jurisdiction and they will get a phone call when their child is processed so they can pick them up. No additional information is provided. The phone call usually comes in a around 3AM by which time their child has been in a cell with a bunch of god knows what, being subjected to god knows what.

When I was 13 I was harrassed daily by a particular boy. I was an extremely shy and introverted (okay - pathetic) child. One day he tripped me in the hall and I turned around and slugged him. He proceeds to grab my binder and fling it all over the hall, so I am late to class. The teacher asks me why and I tell him to ask the guy. We are both sent to the Pricipals office. He gets a slap on the wrist with "wink wink" about his crush on me, and I get in trouble because it is never acceptable for a young lady to throw a punch. I was outraged then, but if it happened today, I would have been hauled off to the County facility, and probably traumatized for life.

This weeks story. An honors class arrives to their modular and the substitute teacher never arrives to let them in. One kid decides to go in through a window to unlock the door. All the kids are then in the room behaving for the period, rather than wandering around. Where is the responsibility of the school to know a class is unattended? Apparently that's not an issue for the administration, the child who unlocked the door has been written up for breaking and entering. DUH!???

There is just no judgement or accountability anymore in too many school districts. It's just to easy to place the blame on the kids and parents and get the situation out their classroom. Then the child becomes frightened or frustrated escalating the situation just enough for them to be hauled off (which doesn't have to mean anything even got physical). Some of the incidents I know off were simply started by a child mutterring under their breath and confronted when it should have been ignored.

It's a sorry state of affairs.

Edit: Oh - you got a WATS from me too.

[edit on 12/10/2005 by Relentless]

Yes, I'm sick about it. Relentless, you pretty much mirrored my thoughts on this.

Many adults these days who work with children haven't the slightest idea how to communicate with them. It's like they think bullying and force is the only way to work with a child. Where do these people come from?

Why is it that the police officer's first instinct is to instill terror into these kids? Like that will make a lasting impression and force them to respect him? What kind of whacked logic is he operating under? That kind of behavior will result in hatred and nothing else.

(Yes, I called the police officer a terrorist!)

Thankfully, I don't have children, but if I did, they wouldn't be in the government-run child detention facilities that our schools have become, that's for damn sure. The people who run these places are out of control. It's clear they have no respect for children whatsoever. If the only way they can control kids is with fear and brute force, then they lost control a long time ago.

I sympathize with anyone whose kids are in public school. And it really pisses me off that I'm paying to operate them!

WATS

Great post loam and great replies. Your examples left me a bit queasy

I think this is a complicated issue.
First, there is so little respect for other people these days. It's almost as if we are becoming a society that places little value on life.

Second, parents aren't doing their jobs as parents. And I sometimes think school and other authority figures like it thta way. That way the schools and other authority can mold the child as wanted.

Third, authority in this country is getting out of hand. LIke Relentless getting in trouble for defending herself. And the kid getting in trouble for helping his classmates by going through the window.

Fourth, authority is getting WAAAAY out of hand. Many of the police have big attitude problems. Many of the police act as if they were on steroids. Many of the laws act against good children and good citizens.

Fifth, P.C.--political correctedness, in case anyone wonders--sucks and is ruining this country and its freedom-loving citizens.

Loam, I was sickened not only by the fac that kids are being treated so badly but also by how widespread this issue is

I gree with others that it is a way to groom kids for feeling like they MUST go along with authority figures and there is little respect for others.
You see it all over, adults cussing with abandon, cutting each other off in traffic.
You see cops overuing their authority in adults, using excessive force all to often.

Now, the kids are learning they are not immune.
Maybe one kid is victimized, but all the witnessing are witnessing and are being desensitized regarding this type of control.

My question: what can be done to correct this situation?

WATS

cavscout
soficrow
Relentless
Benevolent Heretic
DontTreadOnMe
Nikita

Thank you for the compliments concerning my post...

I feel I need to add fuel to the fire, so to speak...

Why is this happening? What has led us down this path? Are we this socially corrupt, or is there something more sinister involved? I have no conclusions yet, but keep reading...

www.conspiracyplanet.com...
Bush Cheney 'Mental Health' For Kids: Take Drugs

At an FDA hearing on the safety of psychotropic drugs on Feb 2, 2004, dozens of tortured parents testified that their children had committed suicide or other violent acts after being prescribed the same drugs being marketed in the Bush-backed pharmaceutical industry schemes aimed at recruiting the nation's 52 million school children as customers.

In July 2003, the Bush appointed New Freedoms Commission on Mental Health (NFC) recommended screening all children for mental illness and
designated TeenScreen as a model program to ensure that every student receives a mental health check-up before finishing high school.

The NFC also has a preferred drug program in place
modeled after the Texas Medication Algorithm Project
(TMAP), that lists what drugs are to be used on
children found to be mentally ill.

The list contains every drug that people complained
about at the FDA hearing, including Paxil, Zoloft,
Celexa, Wellbutron, Zyban, Remeron, Serzone, Effexor,
Buspar, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroqual, Geodone,
Depakote, Adderall, and Prozac.

More related links:

President Bush's Commission on Mental Health Endorses Screening Youth to Prevent the Development of Serious Mental Health Problems

Psychiatric Drugs: TeenScreen Draws Criticism, Legal Challenge

According to this site, in 2003, about 4.4 million children aged 4 to 17 (7.8 percent of U.S. children) were reported to have been diagnosed with ADHD at some point. Of these, 56 percent were reported to be taking medication for the disorder. That's over 2 million children drugged! Does that make sense???

ATS Related Threads:

Are we over-medicating our children?

Watered down children?

Popping Pills in Preschool

Conspiracy to Drug Americas Youth

Schools, the new drug pusher.

Ritalin and other Medications for kids?

UPDATED: Ritalin, the lobotomy of the 21st Century

Drug makers to profit from Bush scheme to label kids mentally ill

FDA panel finds first ADHD patch safe, effective


Here are example links that dispute ADHD is even a real disorder...(There are dozens more available...)

ADHD Facts

"THEY LIED"


And then, you see something like this:

Exceptions in new EPA rules would allow testing pesticides on children

...or read something like this:

CIA Experiments with Mind Control on Children

And finally something like this:

Conspiracy of Missing Children

In totality, either you have to believe that we as a society NEVER cared about children, or something has pushed us in this direction.

Maybe the former is true... Maybe the conspiracy has been hiding that fact... Or maybe, some group wants you to believe there is something wrong with our children that would justify this type of treatment...or lack of concern... or maybe, as some of you suggested, there is a campaign to change the mindset of future generations...

:shk:

Places a whole knew meaning on the term "happy childhood," doesn't it?



[edit on 25-4-2006 by loam]

Have you noticed the timing?

Just when the world can no longer deny the international, organized, child sex trade, children on the whole have been devalued in the eyes and hearts of society.

When we cared about children only a few "discredited" survivers knew spoke out and were heared, now that we know, we don't care and the evil of the world get away with even more.

If only the legal system was as good at locking up ALL child abussers as the it does the abussed children. But no. We choose to protect the evil because they trade money, power, fame and praise for our silence.

It's interesting that only a few months ago, a bunch of masons and their supporters on ATS, accused me of being mental and worse for raising this issue as fact.

[edit on 10-12-2005 by suzy ryan]

What I think, is that they've been doing this for centuries, but the people have become blind to it.

The reason...? Because Americans have been blinded by the "Spend spend spend, work work work to pay it off" mentality.

This is a distraction, put in place by the people with power.

I don't have time to say more, but I think most people get the drift of what I'm saying, I'll add more another time.

Just to add another Skunk Works thread on the subject of drugging the children... (Yes, it's mine)

The Purpose of the Drugging of America

Reading about this is like reading a very good Science FIction story about the people who can no longer control the children so there's a concerted effort to drug them and control them for future... what?

But this ain't sci-fi!

Thanks, Benevolent Heretic!

Wait! There is even more...

A Critical Look At The Foster Care System: How Great the Need?

Today, over half a million children are in foster care in the United States. The vast majority of these children have been removed from their homes without legal excuse or justification. Psychologist and author Dr. Seth Farber explains:

Only a small minority of these children have been separated from parents who are dangerous to them. The overwhelming majority have been separated from loving and responsible parents. One does not need to be a child psychologist to realize the devastating effect of removing a child from parents with whom he or she is deeply bonded.

The number of children removed from their homes is staggering, and by many accounts continues to increase. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, for example, confirmed during the 1990s that it removed over 1,000 children per month from their homes.

Do these children really all come from families who are so abusive and neglectful of their children that they need to be removed from their homes?

"The majority of parents who come before our court love their children," explained Denise Kane, Inspector General of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, to a Congressional subcommittee. "Their children look to them with love and seek the attention and nurturing of their parents."

A 1990 study conducted in Illinois by the Chapin Hall Center for Children would bear this out. At least 40% of the children in foster care found the reasons for placement confusing, while one-third of them did not even know why they had a caseworker...

Did these children truly all arrive from abusive or neglectful households? Just as in Illinois, many could safely have been left in their own homes, according to the testimony of Department head Peter Digre.

Under questioning by a Congressional subcommittee, Digre admitted to legislators that about half of the removals of children from their homes in his system are due to poverty, and not abuse or neglect.

"It gets down to those very specific issues about a place to live, food on the table, medical care, and thing like that," he explained, adding, "about half of the families are not physical abusers, not sexual abusers, not people with propensities to violence but simply people who are struggling to keep ends pulled together and are eminently salvagable."

This was too much for a frustrated Congressman Herger, who replied: "Evidently, it is your department's practice to remove children from families in about 50 percent of the cases because they don't have enough money."

In Sacramento, California, child protective services caseworkers removed an estimated 400 children per month during the late 1990s--up from previous levels of 200 per month. Authorities reviewed cases that in some instances stemmed from five-year-old reports, conducting random sweeps of homes late at night without search warrants.

The majority of the children removed in these midnight raids have not necessarily been abused or neglected, rather they are determined to be "at risk" of abuse or neglect at some point in the future...

Half the children now in foster care could safely be in their own homes if proper services were provided. Now, the federal government spends eight times more on children in foster care than on services to keep children out of foster care.

...

Why does that the federal government spends eight times more on children in foster care than on services to keep children out of foster care? How does that make sense?

Here are some charts that put the foster care issue into perspective...



And...



And...



The article above continues...

The inability on the part of many child protective services caseworkers to differentiate between poverty and neglect is a major contributing factor to the continued inappropriate removals of children from their homes, argue many system critics.

Close to 85 per cent of the cases agencies label as neglect are actually poverty cases, says Trevor Grant, former Director of Social Services of the New York City Child Welfare Administration, and removing children from their homes is often the safest course of action for a caseworker to take:

For the most trivial reasons families are destroyed. If the furniture is broken down or the house is messy, CWA workers will remove the child. When in doubt, the safest practice for the workers is to remove the children and then to file neglect charges that never have to be proved in court...

In Los Angeles, lawyers at the office of Public Counsel reviewed every abuse and neglect petition filed in the county during one week in 1987. They found 30% of the petitions to be so groundless that they should never have been filed at all.

Two years later in Seattle, Washington, the Governor's Commission on Children came to the same conclusion, finding that 30% of the petitions filed were for children who did not need to be in foster care.

In Illinois, researchers for the Child Welfare Institute in Atlanta examined cases in three Illinois cities in 1994, conducting interviews with parents, foster parents, and caseworkers. Again, the researchers reached exactly the same conclusion. Reports the Chicago Tribune:

The Child Welfare Institute determined that in one-third of the cases, there was absolutely no reason for the children not to be home with their parents. The children were in foster care for the protection of their caseworker, not for their own safety...

The Philadelphia Daily News reports that a recent study sponsored by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation concluded that for every 1,000 children placed in the state's care, only 30 were victims of actual abuse.

...

I strongly urge you to read the entire article its filled with well documented statistics like this one:

According a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, lengthy interviews conducted with children and parents from 200 randomly sampled cases revealed no surprises. Parents who were separated from their children felt they had been unfairly separated. As for their children, the article continues:

At least 80% of the children, asked to name three wishes, mentioned that they wanted to be with their mother or father. Many tended to believe that the separation was their fault.

Not only are child protective workers quick to tear children away from their families, but they are slow to return them as well.

So what happens when the state gets a hold on these children? (I could barely read the following without punching a wall... )

HOW SAFE THE SERVICE?

A recent TIME Magazine article references a troubling report commissioned by the Reagan Administration during the late 1980s, which concluded:

Foster care is intended to protect children from neglect and abuse at the hands of parents and other family members, yet all too often it becomes an equally cruel form of neglect and abuse by the state.

In the State of California, two San Diego County Grand juries would echo these concerns, finding that: "Professionals working in the field of child abuse voiced strong concerns that the children removed from abusive homes were being abused again by a system designed to protect them."

A Santa Clara County Grand Jury reached similar conclusions, having determined that children often face greater risks in its existing foster care program than they do in their own homes:

Sometimes, foster care placements are made that are just as abusive, if not more so, than the home from which the child was removed. The Grand Jury learned of placements where sexual and physical abuse took place. There was even a case where the infant died.

In Washington State, a blue-ribbon Governor's task force concluded:

The effect of our present foster care system is disastrous. Children are moved from one foster home to another, their school attendance is disrupted and health care needs often go unmet. They are sometimes exposed to abuse by other children in care...

During a recent two year period, one foster child died on average every seven and a half weeks in the state of Arizona. Four of them were reported as having been "viciously beaten to death" by their foster parents...

Just how many abuse and neglect related incidents actually occur in foster care is difficult to determine, given the child protection agencies apparent unwillingness to investigate them. It becomes nearly impossible with confidentiality laws shielding child protection agencies from public scrutiny...

You can also read more here: HOW WIDESPREAD A PROBLEM? It too is filled with horrifying facts like this one:

According to an Associated Press investigation, in nearly half the states, cases take years to come to completion as agencies repeatedly fail to investigate abuse reports in a timely fashion, find permanent homes for children, or even keep track of those children under their care and custody...

Then there is also this:

...the state of Florida had managed to lose track of nothing less than 500 of its foster care children...

Since August of 2002, officials in the states of California, Tennessee, and Michigan have disclosed that hundreds of children are similarly "missing" from their foster care systems...

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services reported in August that 740 foster children were missing from its system...

Shortly thereafter, Michigan foster care officials announced that 300 foster children were missing from their foster care system....

Read this account: THE LOST CHILDREN

Once again, Who is out of control???

Welcome to our Nation's view of children...

Is all this coincidence? Ineptitude? Incompetence? Hmmmm.....


[edit on 25-4-2006 by loam]

I actually started to cry reading through this thread.

Children nowadays are no longer considered blessings. People consider them to be burdens (like, the kill them before they're born attitude, or poking fun at someone who voluntarily has 15 children). This society tends to treat children as property overall, instead of precious little human beings that need a guiding hand.

I am not going to send my son to a public school. The only thing I have to do with the school district has to do with occupational and speech therapy for him. I really don't think he needs the OT, but I don't think it'll hurt.

I intend to homeschool my son. Here in Ohio you have to start by the time they're in first grade (he'll be 4 on Friday, so I have a few years--September 30 cutoff date here), you have to let the superintendent know, and you have to have a high school diploma (which I have).

Loam outstanding thread, I had seen what is going on with children in the classroom first hand and I had experienced what it is to have your child on drugs because the school think that he may have some problems.

These is a pattern and is accumulating and heading to only one place, like BH pointed out, is going to drugging American starting with the children.

What a sorry nation we have become when we think that drugs are the perfect answer.

You got my vote this month.

There is not one "Proper Channel" I haven't tried to go through for justice, from police to politicians and all the lackies in between.

When it comes to Organized Child Sexual Abuse the sickening fact I found was, THEY ALL KNOW how huge the 'problem' is, they see the same names of abusers again and again on their files, yet put protecting the "accused", in the name of "justice", first and foremost.

On the rare occassions a task force is set up to close down these networks of abusers, you end up with more "suicides" than convictions. If they're not tested in court they can't "implicate" other "important" and "respected" people.

On those rare occasions you do find a professional to "go to bat" for justice, they soon lose the will, courage or job to follow through, then you have to start all over again with someone else, who in the vast majority advise you to go to ground and just worry about "healing". These people are EVIL.

Australia too, loses "Wards of the State" to prostitution and drugs in foster and group homes. Occasionally it hits the media, then quickly gets ignored, as this topic does every time it comes up on ATS.

The last family I reported for prostituting out their children, all but one of the 4 pre-school age, was moved to where the police, their regular "clients", could continue without being bothered by the likes of me and I again ended up hospitalized.

Sad thing too, that I can't say too much on a public forum, for fear it could turn up to be held as prejudicial against an "accused" and cause them to walk free.

Drugging our children as the norm and turning them into people with a "history of mental illness" makes them "unreliable" witnesses, a much needed buffer for those who prey on them, now that the world is becoming aware of the truth of the horror 'stories'.

[edit on 10-12-2005 by suzy ryan]

I'm curious about the original post.

If a kid is punching and hitting the principal, or is hurting other kids, what is the appropriate response?

It is clear that all the posters here think handcuffs are inappropriate.


The police have a duty to protect the principal and the other kids from a child who is hitting kicking or punching them right?

So, what is the RIGHT way to restrain a child who is hurting others???

dr_strangecraft.....I'm curious, out of this whole thread of horror, you wonder how police can restrain a 10 y.o. .... no shock, horror, tazering and handcuffing kids as young as 5 and 6....if police can't "hold" a 10 y.o. to stop them punching 'till they wear out....I have made up my mind as to the purpose and intent of your "contribution" to this thread....I suppose the only time a police officer can 'hold' a kid is to restrain them, otherwise tazers are "appropriate"....I am soooo biting my tongue.....readers, please be aware of this type of "reasonable question" tactic, of diverting and killing off discussion about the rampant, SANCTIONED, PROTECTED, ORGANIZED, abuse of children.....I'm too familier with the evils in this thread to be shocked but your "question" implying that the issue was, how to "restrain" "dangerous" children, when it so clearly isn't, made me feel sick.

In case you missed the answer to your "question", you hold them 'till they wear out or their parents arrive, IF and WHILE they are TRUELY a DANGER to their or another's LIFE, but we all know this wasn't the issue in the thread but "inappropriate" force repeatedly and widely used against very young children because people like you DO and WILL argue that it's "World's Best Practice"....

[edit on 10-12-2005 by DontTreadOnMe]

I'm sorry my question made you sick.

It WAS an honest question.
I really DONT have a problem with the idea that handcuffs are unnacceptable on small children.

I personally never hancuffed anyone under the age of 15. But then, I didn't deal with juveniles much, either. The vast majority of them were victims rather than perps. Still, it is a cop's duty to be able to respond appropriately and effectively, regardless of a perp's special circumstances and/or needs.


In an emergency room, one accepted way to restrain a child in order to clear an airway or pump their stomach is to thread a towel or pillowcase under their back, but over their arms. (with the child lying on their back). This way, the child is not harmed, but cannot get their hands free to dislodge an intubation, etc.

The problem with that is, you need at least one person on each appendage, as well as parental consent, unless the kid is having convulsions, I think.

I DO empathize with the teachers, principals and other students, though. If anyone touches a kid who's "going postal," they are liable to charges of assaulting a minor.

While authorities should NEVER be allowed to mistreat a child, it seems that they are in a catch-22; whatever they do (even if they do nothing), someone will sue them for misconduct.

Most departments don't have clear guidlines in areas like this, so that the whole department won't get sued along with the responding officer.


At least part of the problem, in my book, is that when authorities feel like they are damned if they do and damned if they don't, then the good ones leave and find another line of work.

Which is what I did.

,

The "problems" you describe with enforceing legal constraint of children are "societies" modern, P.C. constructs that are the supporting frame of continued, "justified" abuse of children.

Lets keep tazering 6 y.o.'s so we don't get sued....give me a break....so why doesn't the world have "guidelines" they can agree are just and humane when it comes to children?

Not as important as laws that ensure white collar criminals don't "suffer too much" in their "country club" "gaols"?

How about we hold "tazer day's" for all those who claim it's "natural" to "love" children untill they are "controled"? Oh, that's right, it would be inhuman to do this to the miniscule proprtion of MEN and WOMEN gaoled for these crimes.