Colorado police pepper-spray misbehaving 8-year-old

Link

At first glance, this sounds like a classic case of police brutality. When you read the article, though...

Quote :

DENVER – Eight-year-old Aidan Elliott had thrown a TV and chairs at his Colorado elementary school and was trying to use a cart to bust through a door to an office where teachers and other students fled for safety.

It turns out this wasn't the first such incident with this child.

Quote :

Police found him with a foot-long piece of wood trim with a knife-like point in one hand and a cardboard box in the other.

Yep, it gets worse.

Quote :

Aidan and his mother went on national talk shows on Wednesday to say using pepper spray on an unruly 8-year-old was too much.

If the child had merely been "unruly", I would agree. This incident, however, was way beyond unruly.

Quote :

Aidan started acting up while on the bus to school, the police report said. He began screaming and then continued after breakfast while throwing chairs at his teachers.

"He was being very aggressive, very violent," said Melissa Reeves, the school district spokeswoman.

There were eight students with Aidan in the classroom, Reeves said, and teachers removed them after he became violent. They barricaded themselves in an office, as he tried to bust in, Davis said.

Yeah, that goes past unruly and into dangerous territory.

Quote :

According to the report, Mandy Elliott asked her son what he did.

When he told her he had been hit with pepper spray, she is quoted as saying, "Well, you probably deserved it."

Mom didn't put the kid on TV until the TV people came looking for them. Then she thought her kid was being mistreated.

And the kid's thoughts on the incident?

Quote :

When asked about the pepper spray and what he did, Aidan said: "I kind of deserved it."

Yeah, the kid's not as innocent as the headline makes you think.

I realize that the laws of most states require that they supply schooling to kids with behavior problems, but this is the third time the police have had to get involved where this boy is concerned. Either he needs stronger medicine, different therapy, or placement somewhere that he isn't a danger to himself and others (mostly others, from the looks of it).

What worries me is his attitude towards being pepper-sprayed "I kind of deserved it." It suggests to me he doesn't really think that basically holding an entire classroom hostage with an exacto knife is a big deal.

What they need is the ability to clobber him on the spot when he starts acting THIS insane. He's just an eight year old, yet adults had to flee in terror because if anyone gave him the asswhooping he was so emphatically asking for, they'd have likely been fired and arrested. So they had to call in the Five-Oh, who certainly either had better things to do or donuts to eat.

Although he could be 8 Year Old Hulk. How the hell does one throw a TV? I can barely carry mine.

So like, what's wrong with this kid? And I don't mean that metaphorically. What is mentally wrong with him?
As an autistic individual myself, I've thrown some good and terrorizing fits in my childhood. But it's always been for a damn good reason (to, y'know, a kid). My worst one was probably teachers trying to punish me for another kid stealing my stuff, and I couldn't articulate that he was the theif and I was trying to get it back. Shit was broken, parents were called, the works. I don't believe that a perfectly normal kid would flip out for no reason, no matter how badly parented they are. There had to be soem sort of trigger.

Video here -> [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Looking at the kid in the clip he’s engaging, making eye contact, does not seem to have problems understanding what is being asked of him and appears to have full recollection of the events. I’m not seeing any indicators of autism, Asperger’s or any form of mental handicap.

Couldn’t help but notice the two things he says that that tick him off:

1, Not being able to ‘do what he wants’.
2, Being separated from his mom.

I’m only working on limited info, and I’m a complete novice at this child-analysis stuff, but I can see a professional spotting a couple of red flags right there.

Mom seems to be overly nonchalant about it. She also seems to have an overly simplistic and rose-tinted view opinion of the situation the police officers found the kid in. She seems to honestly think that the cops ran right in and sprayed the kid immediately. “That should have tried to talk to him first” she says.

Reading the article, and noting that the teachers had to barricade themselves in an office to protect themselves from him, I don’t think asking him to calm down was all that much of a viable option.

ETA:

Rabid Badger wrote:

What worries me is his attitude towards being pepper-sprayed "I kind of deserved it." It suggests to me he doesn't really think that basically holding an entire classroom hostage with an exacto knife is a big deal.

This seems to be Mom's attitude as well (at least, that's the impression I get from the video. She is overly concerned with the cop's pepper spraying him, and has little acknowledgement of her kid’s actions).

I really hate playing the “Blame the parent” card, but based on what evidence we’ve got...

When I was subbing, I worked a few times in the class with the kids with behavour problems. One time a student started acting up. The teacher ordered me to take the other students out of the class and hit the call button on the way out. When I left, she was pretty much sitting on the student. It was obvious this was not the first time this happened. This child was in the fifth grade and reading at a Pre-K level. Not sure what the story was, but he was a rough one.
I would also hear stories from other teachers about unruly students.
This kid needs help. The mother needs help, too.

The whole not liking not getting what he wants and being away from mom suggests it's highly unlikely he gets little, if any, discipline at home. My sons went to school with a kid who behaved a lot like this for a couple of years, and his mother basically just let him do whatever he wanted (he used to boast to the other kids at school about how he could stay up all night and watch movies if he wanted because his mom didn't make him do anything he didn't want to). It could be she's scared of triggering him (I don't for one minute doubt he'd turn on her if she told him 'No.'), or if she's just given up because nothing works. I do know the kid they went to school with's mom essentially believed that once the kid was in school, he was no longer her responsibility and it there THEIR job to keep him happy. Which was impossible, because he refused to adhere to the rules and threw major shit-fits if he didn't get his own way.

He was going to the Alternative High School by the time they made it into 9th grade. I don't know if they had any more luck with him than the regular school system had, but I doubt it, given the 'Alternative School' was basically for kids who were destined to end up on welfare and/or in jail.

Edited to add: The kid my sons went to school with wasn't Autistic, but he DID have major psychological issues that, as near as I know, never got addressed, despite the school making repeated appointments for him to see a therapist. I guess the mother would go one or two times, and when he didn't miraculously change overnight would decide it was worthless and quit taking him.

Unfortunately, there are kids that are like this. I am sympathetic to the mother, but to a point. If he is enough of a threat that the school feels they need to call the police to deal with him, it is pretty obvious that a public school is not going to be equipped to deal with his needs.

This is a point the school district really needs to impress upon her. Her child's needs do not override their responsibility to provide a safe learning environment for the other students.

Spotts1701 wrote:

Unfortunately, there are kids that are like this. I am sympathetic to the mother, but to a point. If he is enough of a threat that the school feels they need to call the police to deal with him, it is pretty obvious that a public school is not going to be equipped to deal with his needs.

This is a point the school district really needs to impress upon her. Her child's needs do not override their responsibility to provide a safe learning environment for the other students.

This. I have had to deal with students with severe issues, behavioral or otherwise, who had parents who felt their little darling's needs/wants overrode the needs of the hundreds or thousands of other students at the school. Sorry, but no. The school can deal with kids with problems to a point, but beyond that, the child may need special care and a special facility. There was an autistic boy at the first high school I worked for who would get violent unpredictably. At one point, a girl said something he didn't like, so he punched her so hard he broke her nose, then pushed a whole table full of computers on the floor. He had a one-on-one aide, who had to be transferred and replaced after he attacked her. When the district wanted to put him in a county school that was specifically for dangerous students, his parents screamed that the school was simply prejudiced against autistic children. This was despite the fact that there were several autistic kids at the school who the staff could deal with because they weren't violent like this kid. It wasn't because the kid was autistic that they wanted him gone; it was because he was dangerous.

It sounds much worse than it really is, up until you read how the child was throwing a king-sized tantrum and the mother herself agreed he probably deserved it.

The problem is rising that teachers are encountering problematic children in their classes and they are afraid to lay a freaking finger on them because they think the parents will sue their asses off and they'll lose their job and teaching liscence.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

It sounds much worse than it really is, up until you read how the child was throwing a king-sized tantrum and the mother herself agreed he probably deserved it.

The problem is rising that teachers are encountering problematic children in their classes and they are afraid to lay a freaking finger on them because they think the parents will sue their asses off and they'll lose their job and teaching liscence.

They will, and it's teaching credential, not license.

Lady Anne wrote:

They will, and it's teaching credential, not license.

Not to be nitpicky, but some states (like Nevada) still call them licenses.

Spotts1701 wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

They will, and it's teaching credential, not license.

Not to be nitpicky, but some states (like Nevada) still call them licenses.

Massachusetts does, too.

Spotts1701 wrote:

Lady Anne wrote:

They will, and it's teaching credential, not license.

Not to be nitpicky, but some states (like Nevada) still call them licenses.

You're trying to become a lawyer, right? Let me help you.

Most people: "Not to be nitpicky, but..."

Lawyers: "Your classification is libel and my client expects reparations."

Oh God. What kind of a boring thread derail is this? This story takes place in Colorado, not Arizona, New Mexico, or Massachusetts. It looks like Colorado has licenses.