When you were in kindergarten, most of you were already passed the violent tantrums of the “Terrible Twos/Threes” and were more considerate of others. However, not all children have fully grown out of hysterical outbursts by age six. Recently, this was demonstrated by a six-year-old kindergartener, Salecia Johnson, in Milledgeville, Georgia. Typically, the major media never publicizes a temper tantrum, but Johnson’s ballistic anger ended with the police arresting and handcuffing her.
After pushing two classmates and throwing her teacher’s things, Johnson went to the principal’s office, but she retaliated before entering and became to run and scream down the halls. Once she was finally brought into the principal’s office, Johnson apparently took things off the walls, threw furniture (including allegedly knocking down a bookcase), jumped on a paper shredder, tried to break a glass frame, and bit the doorknob in an attempt to escape. The principal was reportedly injured during the girl’s rampage.
Police were involved when neither of Johnson’s parents could be reached. According to Police Chief Dray Swicord, she was handcuffed “for [her] safety as well as others’” and to maintain police protocol that dictates that any detainees (regardless of age) are to be cuffed and placed in the back of the patrol car. Johnson was charged with simple assault and criminal damage to property and brought to the police station, where she was uncuffed, placed in a patrol briefing room, and even given a beverage. She waited there until her aunt came to retrieve her.
Johnson will not be prosecuted, but she has been suspended from school for the rest of the year. However, the kindergartener’s parents are more concerned with the fact that the police was contacted when it was a school disciplinary situation.
“What is the purpose of counselors and other aides in the school system when they just call law enforcement to calm a child when they act out?” Johnson’s aunt, Candace Ruff said.
This debate can also be applied to BV West. Though the school utilizes on-site officers, BV West also has the Youth Court system, which helps keep student defendants out of actual court and keeps their charges off the record. The defendants are represented, prosecuted, judged, and juried by fellow students. In this way and others, unlike Johnson’s elementary school, BV West takes charge in handling most student issues, instead of contacting the police or using the school’s campus police/student resource officers.
If BV West students can deal with minor criminal offenses amongst themselves, there is no reason that Johnson’s school could not manage to restrain a kindergartner. Even if it was violent, they could have isolated her or gotten more faculty members involved, but to the public’s shock and anger, they felt that only law enforcement could handle the six-year-old girl.