I-Team: Arresting students at school can have long-term effects
BOSTON – Mass shootings have made school security a top priority, but now the WBZ I-Team is joining forces with CBS News Investigations to uncover an unintended side effect. Children as young as elementary age are being arrested in the hallways of their schools.
Experts say arresting juveniles can have traumatic long-term effects. In Massachusetts, an incident at Brockton High School made headlines last year when cellphone cameras caught a Brockton officer kneeling on a teenager's neck and handcuffing him.
"I ask that this doesn't happen to anyone else's kid," the 16-year-old's father said. The I-Team agreed not to use his name, to protect the boy's privacy. "It's a very sad situation for me, and my son is traumatized."
The officer was cleared, and is back at work now in the same hallways where that teen is still a student, accused of assault and caught up in the very complicated Massachusetts criminal justice system.
School districts across the country report arrest numbers to the federal government once every couple of years. A CBS News analysis of the most recent data available shows students are ending up in handcuffs before they even make it to high school.
Massachusetts elementary schools called police on children 22 times in the 2017-2018 school year. Three were arrested.
The I-Team also looked at sixth through eighth graders in the state. Over the last five years, middle schools in Dennis-Yarmouth, Swampscott, Douglas, and Randolph reported arresting a combined half dozen adolescents, plus three more who were summonsed to court.
"I got mixed up in a lot of different things," said Zaire Richardson, who was 14 when she had her first interaction with Boston Police. "I just felt like they already made their decision and I'm going to jail, so I just felt very lost and just frightened."
"It's removing you from your family, from your peers, and putting you in a category. That's going to continue to perpetuate that identity, and it's going to be more harmful for you coming out," Sarah Coughlin, who heads up the Charlestown Coalition, said.
It's an organization that among other things, works with the Suffolk District Attorney to keep kids away from criminal courts. Instead, the coalition has created youth groups that engage kids in the community.
One such program is called Turn it Around, which just created a new chapter.
"I was getting weekly calls from therapists, guidance counselors, teachers, asking us to connect or bring kids into Turn it Around, who were just too young, and I had to keep turning these kids away," Turn it Around Coordinator Mswati Hanks said.
So this month, Turn it Around Junior started to help those younger kids. Richardson is in charge, and is emotional when she imagines what her younger self would have thought.
"Very surprised with how we turned out," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.
But the teenager caught on dramatic video getting arrested at Brockton High last year is still mired in the court system. He awaits another hearing this week, and his father is pleading for schools to consider how they could have turned his son's situation around.
"He's a good student, he gets good grades," he said. "Even though what happened wasn't a good thing, the cops shouldn't have handled it like that."
When the I-Team ran the arrest numbers by local school administrators, some questioned the accuracy of what they themselves reported.
Because of WBZ's questions, some are now taking a much closer look at their own arrest rates.