Police are used to being called to all sorts of different, and sometimes strange, situations. However, on June 16th, they never expected to show up at this unlikely location — an elementary school.
The police were responding to a call from the William P. Tatem Elementary school in Collingswood, New Jersey. Supposedly the entire ordeal started all because of brownies being served at the end-of-the-year class party.
It was reported that a third grader had made an unknown comment about the brownies; another student overheard them and claimed that it was, in fact, a racist remark. The school decided they needed to get the police involved.
The police officers sat down and spoke with the 9-year old boy who made the supposed racist comment, along with his mother, Stacy dos Santos.
Dos Santos stands by her son and says that school completely overreacted and her little boy would never do such thing; he simply made a comment about the snacks.
“He said they were talking about brownies. . . . Who exactly did he offend?” dos Santos said to a local news station.
The drama continued to unfold as the police later contacted the boy’s father and then referred to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency.
The 9-year-old was traumatized, according to his mom; he even stayed home from his last day of school. Dos Santos even wants to put her child in a new school come the fall.
That’s not all — she demands an apology from the school.
“I’m not comfortable with the administration [at Tatem]. I don’t trust them, and neither does my child,” she said. “He was intimidated, obviously. There was a police officer with a gun in the holster talking to my son, saying, ‘Tell me what you said.’ He didn’t have anybody on his side.”
The incident caught wind throughout the community — it immediately sparked outrage.
Parents are upset that incidents such as this could have easily been handled by the school and by no means warranted police attention.
The Superintendent of the school district, Scott Oswald, says that officers have been called up to 5 times a day in a district of only 1,875 students. This caused understandable concern amongst the parents.
Parents have launched a petition to “stop mandated criminal investigation of elementary school students.”
A meeting on May 25th involving the police, school officials, and the Prosecutor’s office established that schools would call the police regarding any criminal incidents; including “as minor as a simple name-calling incident that the school would typically handle internally,” according to the police chief.
They also decided to report “just about every incident” to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency, Carey said.
Just a couple months later, the directive is being seriously reconsidered. It has gone way too far.
Parents fear that the increased police involvement is not helping their children, in fact — it’s ridiculous. One mother, Megan Irwin was understandably concerned:
“Some of it is just typical little-kid behavior,” Irwin said. “Never in my years of teaching have I ever felt uncomfortable handling a situation or felt like I didn’t know how to handle a situation.”
“I don’t want this to happen to another child,” dos Santos said.
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Source: Philly
