Stunning annual crime statistics compiled by the FBI show that between 2013 and 2017, at least 26,966 children under the age of 10 were arrested in the United States.
The recent arrests of two 6-year-old students in Orlando, which prompted outrage and the firing of the officer who restrained one child's hands with flex cuffs, mirrors a persistent problem confronting law enforcement and schools with thousands of children arrested annually and treated like"mini-adults," experts said.
And 24 states have no minimum age to transfer juvenile cases to adult criminal court according to the Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Meralyn Kirkland, the grandmother of one of the 6-year-olds arrested this month in Orlando by a school resource officer, told ABC affiliate station WFTV in Orlando that her granddaughter, who is black, was taken into custody on suspicion of battery when she allegedly had a meltdown at school and ended up kicking a staff member.
Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon announced last week that the school resource officer had been fired for allegedly violating department policy by failing to get a supervisor's approval for arresting a child under the age of 12. -- In January 2018, a 7-year-old boy was handcuffed at a Miami school and placed in a police car because, according to an incident report by Miami-Dade Schools Police Department, he misbehaved after a teacher told him"not to play with his food." The district said he"attacked" the teacher and continued to fight her even after she restrained him.
In 2013-'14, the data was similar -- 260,000 students were referred to law enforcement and 92,000 were subjected to school-related arrests. In addition to contacts with law enforcement, the data shows that there were racial disparities in out-of-school suspensions as well, beginning in preschool, with black children -- or children of color -- disproportionately banned from school property.
Some school districts employ deputies from local police departments, while others, such as Miami-Dade County in Florida, employ an independent police force for their schools. Still, others employ school resources officers, defined in U.S. DOE reports as"career sworn law enforcement officers with arrest authority, who have specialized training and are assigned to work in collaboration with school organizations." According to the U.S.
"There has to be a lot of sensitivity that takes place from an officer's standpoint working within a school," Canady told ABC News."There are three things we're very clear that have to happen: One is that an officer that's going to work in that environment must be very carefully selected. You're talking about putting an adult from your law enforcement agency in a school environment, working with sometimes young children.
Canady, a retired Alabama police officer who spent half of his 25-year law enforcement career as a school resource officer, said officers are also trained to refrain from getting involved in instances that are clearly disciplinary matters that can be handled by school officials. "Even relatively simple actions, such as removing suspension as a consequence for low-level offenses, can have a significant impact on suspension rates," the report said, noting that contacts with the criminal justice system can have devastating and lasting impacts on youth and disproportionately affect minorities.
The commission's report also showed that 1.6 million students attend a school with a sworn law enforcement officer but not a school counselor. The report found that in the 2015-'16 academic year, schools reported having more than 27,000 school resource officers, compared to 23,000 social workers.
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