LAW AND ORDER?

Desre’e Watson, a kindergartener in Avon Park Florida, was recently arrested at her school and charged with a felony and two misdemeanors.

N.Y. Times columnist Bob Herbert said that according to the police report, the six-year-old had apparently disrupted the learning environment by throwing an uncontrollable tantrum. When teachers were unable to calm her down, they called the cops.

When she saw them, Desre’e sensibly scooted under a table, with law enforcement in hot pursuit. It took several minutes to get the job done, since recommended techniques of capturing a squirming six-year-old were probably not part of their training manuals.

Finally, they handcuffed her, but even that procedure did not go smoothly. It turns out that putting adult handcuffs on kids is hardly a piece of cake.

According to Police Chief Frank Mercurio, “You can’t handcuff them on their wrists, because their wrists are so small, so you have to handcuff them up by their biceps.”

Bob Herbert noted that as he listened to the chief describe the situation, he felt as if he had “stumbled into the middle of a skit on ‘Saturday Night Live.'”

This feeling was not diminished when he looked at a copy of the police report: “Black female. Six years old. Thin build. Dark complexion.”

Chief Mercurio said that Desre’e was taken in a patrol car to the police station where she went through the fingerprinting process and got a mug shot.

According to columnist Herbert, one of the strangest comments uttered by the police chief was that this was not the first six-year-old they had arrested.

Although schools suffer no shortage of counselors and therapeutic facilities these days, there appears to be an increasing reliance on outside law enforcement to handle the most mundane issues.

What fuels these reactions is hard to say. Calling the police used to be the last resort . . . Now, it’s a cell phone call away.

Is this situation in Avon Park an extension of those cases where people call “911” to ask for a weather forecast, complain that their pizza is cold or ask for help to change the battery in their smoke detector?

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia’s monthly newsletter, the Campus Report, from which this is excerpted.