Lynchburg, VA — Nothing wreaks of the police state like police officers assaulting and arresting children at school; especially an 11-year-old boy with autism.
Meet Kayleb Moon-Robinson, a 6th grader at Linkhorne Middle School, whose life has been forever changed thanks to the American police state.
Kayleb’s problems began one day as a teacher was yelling at him for misbehaving. In a fit of anger, Kaleb kicked a trashcan; not a teacher, not another student, a trashcan.
When the school police officer witnessed Kaleb’s attack on the trashcan, instead of getting detention or losing his recess break, Kaleb was arrested. He was then charged with disorderly conduct in juvenile court.
Disturbingly enough, none of the teachers or school officials saw a problem with the use of law enforcement to remedy middle school discipline problems.
Not only did they see nothing wrong with it, but school officials actually used this armed agent of the state as their personal attack dog on this 11-year-old autistic boy.
After the initial charge of disorderly conduct, life for this little boy, who says he loves science, would get worse, much worse.
Only a few weeks later, Kaleb would be accused of breaking another rule. Kaleb, who was treated differently than all of the other students, was forced to remain in the classroom until all of the other students left at the end of each period.
In November, Kaleb left the classroom as the other students left, instead of waiting. The principle then sicked his state-sponsored attack dog on this boy. The school cop approached Kaleb, who might weigh 80 pounds, as if her were a 250 pound hardened criminal.
“He grabbed me and tried to take me to the office,” Kayleb told the Center for Public Integrity. “I started pushing him away. He slammed me down, and then he handcuffed me.”
The incident was witnessed by school officials, and none of them spoke up or tried to stop it.
The Center for Public Integrity reports:
Stacey Doss, Kayleb’s mother and the daughter of a police officer herself, was outraged. Educators stood by, she said, while the cop took her son in handcuffs to juvenile court. The officer filed a second misdemeanor disorderly conduct complaint. And he also submitted another charge, a very grown-up charge for a very small boy: felony assault on a police officer. That charge was filed, Doss said the officer told her, because Kayleb “fought back.”
“I thought in my mind — Kayleb is 11,” Doss said. “He is autistic. He doesn’t fully understand how to differentiate the roles of certain people.”
However, the fact that this young boy with autism hadn’t really done anything wrong, did not stop a Lynchburg juvenile court judge from finding Kaleb guilty.
Earlier this month Kaleb was convicted of felony assault on a police officer. At 11, this young boy’s life has been permanently altered. He will now carry a felony conviction around with him for the rest of his life.
As tragic as Kaleb’s story sounds, it is sadly not an isolated one. Young autistic children often find themselves on the receiving end of police state violence while attending public school.
In January, Colton Granito, an 8-year-old boy with autism, threw a tantrum during class. Instead of following the boy’s IEP plan, police were called. Colton was handcuffed, transported to jail, and forced to sit in a cell for hours wearing a straight jacket. He was subsequently charged with assault and sentenced to probation.
The photo below is of a 10-year-old child handcuffed, laid out on the back of a police cruiser. The boy’s name is Ryan and he has autism. He misbehaved at school and was also arrested and treated like a criminal.
In September of last year, we reported on body cam footage showing a 9-year-old special needs boy handcuffed as his father pleaded with the officer to release him.
That same month, a highly disturbing video of cops manhandling a 13-year-old autistic child as he screamed for help emerged on Facebook.
And these cases contain only autistic children. If you truly want a glimpse into the horrid effects of the police state on all school children, take a scroll through our archives, at this link.
“The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.” -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Being dependent upon the state to solve one’s problems is a de facto dependency upon violence.
Until people wake up to the reality of relying on a system of violence to maintain “order,” we can expect this problem to get worse.
Reprinted with permission by the author from The Free Thought Project. Original article can be found here.
About Matt Agorist
Matt Agorits writes extensively for The Free Thought Project on police abuse. He remains an enigma. You can follow Matt on Twitter https://twitter.com/MattAgorist.
I am utterly shocked to hear such treatment of our children can happen in the land of the free!! As a mother of a child with Autism I can not thank GOD enough I can homeschool my daughter . The parents need to contact legal authority to make a claim against the state! This can not be allowed we must fight for our children rights . Autistic children have an IEP for a reason. It needs to be followed or what is the purpose . Our system is completely broke when it is ok to hand cuff young children take them to jail not notify their parents and just off to jail DOES THIS SOUND RIGHT??
What this shows is that zero tolerance policies in schools violates the disability act, especially given the child has an IEP. That no teacher or administrator stood up to the abuse of a disabled child speaks to the core of the problem. How is it that educators do not know outburst are part of this diagnosis? The administrators and those who witnessed and supported the abuse did not do their civic duty of reporting child abuse and should be charged with being complicit in abusing a child with a documented neurological disability. Some lawyer and advocates need to do some pro-bono work and represent these families (likely minorities) so this nazi-like abuse gets addressed in the press and in the courts. State legislators need to be knowledgable about neurological disabilities as well for funding purposes and how bullying legislation can further discriminate and harm such children. As a parent who has had school try this path I can only say you have to fight back with knowledge of your children’s rights and how such acts can and are criminal and can be worked out before the lawyer gets involved or if need be, with a lawyer. Don’t back down to administrative intimidation .Those administrators should be held accountable for child abuse. Abusing disabled children with neurological brain seizures and predictable behaviors, is nothing but bullying abuse and child endangerment. Call out this behavior for what it is. Generate publicity about such abuse so that they are forced to learn appropriate protocol for behavioral disabilities.
No it does not bc police do not understand what autism is because they do not have the necessary training to deal with autistic kids.