What About the Kids?

 

Police in Key West, Florida, 2018, with an 8-yr-old

“I can’t go to sleep… I keep thinking about the police coming.”

10-year-old Royal Smart remembering police guns, handcuffs, freezing cold… when he was 8 (no one was arrested in the weapons search).

The majority of police departments across the United States have few if any specialized rules and procedures for handling young children. Officers are generally provided limited if any training when dealing with such young charges, and as we shall see, a disproportionate number of children traumatized by the application of adult police procedures and restraints are black or Latino. Many of these young charges are simply caught up in a police search, usually under a warrant, and are simply restrained during the search. They are often not the subject of the search or likely to be arrested, regardless of the result.

Writing for the Associated Press (November 25th), Helen Wieffering, Colleen Long and Camille Fassett provide details of the AP’s analysis of the available data: “Kids are still an afterthought in reforms championed by lawmakers and pushed by police departments. But in case after case, an Associated Press investigation has found that children as young as 6 have been treated harshly — even brutally — by officers of the law.

“They’ve been handcuffed, felled by stun guns, taken down and pinned to the ground by officers often far larger than they were. Departments nationwide have few or no guardrails to prevent such incidents… The AP analyzed data on about 3,000 instances of police use of force against children younger than 16 over the last 11 years. The data, provided to the AP by Accountable Now, a project of the Leadership Conference Education Fund aiming to create a comprehensive use-of-force database, include incidents from 25 police departments in 17 states.

“It’s a small representation of the 18,000 police agencies nationwide and the millions of daily encounters police have with the public… But the information gleaned is troubling… Black children made up more than 50% of those who were handled forcibly, though they are only 15% of the U.S. child population. They and other minority kids are often perceived by police as being older than they are. The most common types of force were takedowns, strikes and muscling, followed by firearms pointed at or used on children. Less often, children faced other tactics, such as the use of pepper spray or police dogs.

“In Minneapolis, officers pinned children with their body weight at least 190 times. In Indianapolis, more than 160 kids were handcuffed; in Wichita, Kan., police officers drew or used their Tasers on kids at least 45 times. Most children in the data set are teenagers, but the data included dozens of cases of children age 10 or younger who were also subject to police force… Force is occasionally necessary to subdue children, some of whom are accused of serious crimes.

“Police reports obtained for a sample of incidents show that some kids who were stunned or restrained were armed; others were undergoing mental health crises and were at risk of harming themselves. Still other reports showed police force escalating after kids fled from police questioning. In St. Petersburg, Fla., for instance, officers chased a Black boy on suspicion of attempted car theft after he pulled the handle of a car door. He was 13 years old and 80 pounds, and his flight ended with his thigh caught in a police K-9’s jaw.” No one is suggesting that young perpetrators should go unrestrained and unpunished, although we have a juvenile “justice” system that is supposed to be designed for more age-appropriate procedures, hearings and, where necessary, confinement. But…

The younger the child, the more their minds and bodies are growing and changing. Many are too young and lack the mental capacity to understand the gravity of their offenses. Yet too many children are restrained and harmed in situations were they are not even suspected of a crime. Most police officers simply do not know what to do. “There are no laws that specifically prohibit police force against children. Some departments have policies that govern how old a child must be to be handcuffed, but very few mention age in their use-of-force policies. While some offer guidance on how to manage juveniles accused of crime or how to handle people in mental distress, the AP could find no policy that addresses these issues together.

“That’s by design, policing experts said, in part so that officers can make critical decisions in the moment. But that means police don’t receive the training they need to deal with kids… ‘Adolescents are just so fundamentally different in so many respects, and the techniques that officers are accustomed to using ... it just doesn’t lend itself to the interaction going well with youth,’ said Dylan Jackson, a criminologist at Johns Hopkins University, who is working with the Baltimore Police Department on juvenile encounters… The trauma lasts. Kids can’t sleep. They withdraw, act out. Their brains are still developing, and the encounters can have long-term impact, psychologists said.” AP. 

The excuse that “that’s the way we’ve always done it” may justify these harsh treatments where “law and order” politics trumps tailoring individual responses to fit the situation. It shouldn’t take a junior George Floyd result to trigger a more humane response. This is the 21st century, and our experts have evolved a vastly more sophisticated knowledge base around disciplining children. Spanking in public schools ended decades ago. It’s time to take our specialized knowledge and apply that knowledge to train police officers how to deal appropriately yet effectively with children… either those simply at a crime or search scene or those sought because they are suspected of a crime.

I’m Peter Dekom, and when we learn more about the impact of child trauma, it would seem obvious to take that knowledge and apply it to police interfacing with children.