In the New York Times, Bob Herbert writes of 6 year old Desre’e Watson, Florida’s newest li’l felon.  There are two options available when a young child throws a tantrum.  You can hold them in your arms, soothe them and show them that someone cares about whatever issues fill their world with anxiety.  Or you can cuff them and rationalize how society needs to be protected from 6 year olds.  One Florida school district chose the latter.  This seems to be an epidemic in Florida.

For a society that claims to have concern and compassion for its children, we seem to struggle when their issues manifest themselves in any way that suggests aggression.  What is striking about Herbert’s op-ed is how the police, through the facile use of rhetoric, take a relatively benign childish tantrum and turn it into a threat to the life and limb of a teacher.  During the course of the tantrum, the child pulled the hair (whether deliberately or not is unknown) of a school employees.  “At least one woman reported ‘some redness’.”  My heart bleeds.

The part of the tale that is most troubling is the description of the police placing the felon in custody.  The handcuffs were too large to put on her wrists.  She would just escape!  So, they had to cuff young Desre’e by her bicepts.  My god, they cuffed a 6 year old!  Did they fear she was a serial hair puller?  And they had the audacity to complain that the cuffs were too small?  That’s because no one should EVER cuff a 6 year old. 

Few stories should evoke the insanity of our times like this one.  Our compulsion for security, and knee-jerk reaction to any threat, no matter how trivial and reflective it may be of a child’s need to love and compassion, results in the sort of treatment that would spark protests in totalitarian regimes.  Yet here we are, enlightened America, cuffing 6 year old alleged hair pullers. 

Do you ever wonder how and why children grow up to have no respect for authority or the law?  You can spin this story any way you want, much as the very important Police Chief Frank Mercuio did in lauding is capture of this young threat to our way of life, but Desre’e Watson is still a 6 year old.  This conduct shames all of us.