Of what crime, exactly, is Paula’s kid guilty?
He is — and I want you to read and study this closely — 10 years old.
This, apparently, was of no consequence since he spent three days locked up after he found a BB gun in the gutter and brought it to his school when classes were out March 31.
My goodness.
It happened outside of Alicia Sanchez Elementary School in Lafayette. The boy found the gun and, with some buddies, began playing police officer, something he still insists he wants to be when he grows up.
Two other kids on skateboards saw the boys playing. Paula’s kid told them he was looking for bad guys. The two skateboard kids the next day told adults at the school, who, as we do more and more often these days, called police.
The next day, Lafayette police arrived at the school, handcuffed the boy and led him to a waiting squad car.
“Wipe your tears because you’re going to scare the other children,” a school official told the crying boy.
Details of the arrest come from the Daily Camera, which first reported the story. The boy’s mother has been identified only as Paula to protect the youngster’s identity.
And his identity should be protected. That boy is no more a criminal than you or I.
What, exactly, are we doing to our children these days?
You must by now have heard of Aiden Elliot.
He is the 8-year-old boy who on Feb. 22 threw a tantrum in his classroom, grabbed a piece of wood trim off the wall and threatened to stab his teacher with it.
The teacher dialed 911.
The little boy, already in a Glennon Heights Elementary School special program for children with behavioral problems, was hit by the officers with two shots of pepper spray, subdued and handcuffed.
I have wanted to scream about this since the first day I read it.
I am hardly a child psychologist, but even I know this trend can lead to nothing that is good and will only deeply harm those two boys and others like them.
The schools have become so frightened of everything and so blind to common sense that the only effective behavioral remedy they believe is available to them is to call the police on children who have been put in their care.
“I don’t know, Mommy,” Paula’s boy told her when she arrived at the school and inquired of him. “I was just playing cops.”
When she told him he was going to be arrested, he reached for her and began crying.
“Help me, Mommy,” he wailed.
Lafayette police Cmdr. Gene McCausey said officers wanted to limit the spectacle by waiting until the school buses had departed for the day and most of the children were gone before leading the handcuffed boy out of a back office and into a squad car.
They could have just called Paula and had her bring the boy to the station. But that is not in the playbook anymore with children.
Now we apparently want to publicly scar them.
And to what end?
Every adult involved with Paula’s kid and the pepper- sprayed boy all say they “acted properly.”
No, the only crime those two boys committed was the foolishness of their youth. The grown-ups around them had not the common sense or moral decency to see that.
They should, at minimum, be very ashamed.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
