At Rutherford County’s Hobgood elementary school,
An 8 year old, two 9 year old’s and an 11 year old walk into a principal’s office…
And are arrested and handcuffed (“out of habit” said officer Jeff Carroll).
At Rutherford County’s Hobgood elementary school,
An 8 year old, two 9 year old’s and an 11 year old walk into a principal’s office…
And are arrested and handcuffed (“out of habit” said officer Jeff Carroll).
America’s militarized police force has become a front line mental health responder in communities suffering from the traumas of job loss, poverty, pandemic anxiety and sickness.
This is likely to result in more George Floyd type killings, more racial outrage and the violence that comes with it.
Last year, 33 states held children and juveniles with mental illness in detention centers without any charges.
In 2001, nearly 2/3 of California local law enforcement departments did not have written guidelines governing the care of children whose sole caretaker had been arrested (Marilyn Moses, article in Police Chief, Sept 2005
This article by Safe Passage for Children explains how 5 of the the 18 MN children killed by their caregivers in the last 18 months were known to local law enforcement but apparently not to child protection services (and what needs to change to fix that).
In my own experience, a seven year old girl was prostituted for years during which the police had been to the house 49 times and only removed the child on the last call because the little girl tried to kill her sister in the presence of the police.
How we value children shows up directly in the way we treat people helping us raise our children.
It hurts me to see political misunderstanding and an accepted practice of misleading people about something as important as this nation’s children. Reading the paper one would think that our problems lie at the feet of service providers (teachers, social workers and foster parents to name the main scapegoats).
At election time, politicians make political hay blaming teachers for failed schools (with public support).
Institutional failures are not the fault of people doing the hard daily work of foster care, teaching or social work.
These folks work within a system designed by policy makers and administrators (most of whom are very well paid – not a bad thing, but a thing to remember when looking for the responsible party).
Blaming worker bees in child protection is just as wrong as blaming law enforcement officers for allowing terrible crimes. Can law enforcement sue policy makers and counties for making their work impossible? – we may soon see).
Wow and thank you Hennepin, Ramsey and Dakota County Sheriffs. Sheriff Rich Stanek’s “we must make investments in early childhood education for Minnesota kids now to avoid paying far more for the cost of crime in the decades to come” took genuine political courage (thank you from Kids At Risk Action Sheriff).
In the Star Tribune article today I found it ironic that full implementation of the Governor’s Universal Pre School would cost almost as much as we spend on prisons in MN each year (the Sheriff is arguing that we will have fewer people to put in those prisons if we support Pre K education for children).
Sheriff’s Matt Bostrom, Tim Leslie, and Rich Stanek – KARA salutes you.
What follows is probably more than you want to know about the long debate from a law enforcement perspective about education, crime, mental health. Please chime in.
Law enforcement officials said statistics show survivors of child abuse or neglect are likely to commit a violent crime later in life. A new strategy is being developed to stop both.
In 2010, Montana received nearly $3 million in grants to battle child abuse and neglect. “I’ve been around this business for over twenty years, and I’ve seen some pretty sad cases, and it’s just not good. If we can prevent even one case, then we’re doing our job. I think with a program like this we’re going to see more prevention,” Sheriff Mike Linder said.