‘Right-wrong family’ pushes back
Brandon Pryor paced in front of Florida Pitt Waller school in Denver, angry, anxious, and blasting out his disbelief on Facebook Live.
It was April 19, 2019. A school staffer had called Pryor to say his 7-year-old son, Malachi, had been handcuffed after “an altercation” with another second-grader. But when Pryor arrived, the school wouldn’t let him see his son. At least four police officers stood behind the purple front door to make sure Pryor didn’t get in.
And Pryor was seething.
“This is egregious,” he said on the Facebook video, which has been viewed 30,000 times. “This is completely unacceptable, and I am pissed off right now.”
Pryor knew he had to stay calm. The Black, 6-foot, 2-inch former linebacker for the Oklahoma Sooners knew losing his cool in front of the cops could land him behind bars — or worse. So he didn’t shout. He firmly spoke his piece into the camera.
Brandon Pryor talks on Aug. 22, 2021, about co-founding the Robert F. Smith STEAM Academy as an alternative to Denver Public Schools like the one his son, Malachi, was handcuffed in when he was 7 years old in Denver, Colorado. (Hannah Gaber/USA TODAY)
“I’m trying to keep it together guys, because I’m no good to anybody locked up and in jail,” he said.
He also accused the school of discriminating against young children of color.
“You all are criminalizing our children inside these schools and then you want to lock me out,” he said. “Bring me my damn son!”
Eventually, Malachi’s parents learned the whole story.
Malachi was in art class, drawing Sonic the Hedgehog when, as Malachi remembers it, another kid came over and said his drawings “sucked.”
The boys started shoving, and their teacher called security. Malachi’s parents, who reviewed surveillance footage of the incident, said their son was led outside the classroom. When he resisted by sitting down, he was restrained by the security officer, dragged down the hallway in front of other students and eventually handcuffed.
Malachi, scared and confused, prayed to God for help.
“Please let me out.”
No charges were filed. The Pryors grabbed Malachi and his younger brother, drove away from the school and went to Uno Pizzeria. Anything to ease the misery of that day.
Samantha Pryor talks on Aug. 22, 2021, about co-founding the Robert F. Smith STEAM Academy as an alternative to Denver Public Schools like the one her son, Malachi, was handcuffed in when he was 7 years old in Denver, Colorado. (Hannah Gaber/USA TODAY)
The incident drew fierce outcry in the community because Malachi’s parents were Brandon and Samantha Pryor, co-founders of Warriors For High Quality Schools, a community organization demanding racial justice within the Denver public schools system.
The Denver school board unanimously passed a resolution to eliminate the use of handcuffs with elementary school students in most cases and reduce the use of handcuffs with middle and high school students.
The school district agreed to a confidential settlement with the family before a lawsuit was even filed.
School resource officers and private security companies have come under fire for years, with advocates insisting that they are heavy-handed, don’t always know how to handle children and give overburdened teachers an easy way to deal with discipline. Then those discipline problems can become criminal problems.
Adding police to the equation doesn’t work because many have no idea how to deal with kids and are doing what they were trained to do — arrest people, said Leona Lee with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“You bring in the police and security elements and demand absolute obedience,” she said. “The only way for them to deal with problems is to arrest people. No negotiating.”
Meanwhile, many children of color feel unsafe around police because they’ve seen friends or relatives targeted by law enforcement. They’re also well aware of the police killings of Black people like George Floyd, Tamir Rice or Philando Castile, said Andrew Hairston with Texas Appleseed, a criminal justice nonprofit.
Still, many teachers support cops in schools. A June 2020 Education Week survey showed that just 23% of educators supported removing armed officers from campuses. And they point to school resource officers like Pamela Revels to show how effective they can be.
Revels — who is on the board of the directors of the National Association of School Resource Officers — has been a school resource officer for all school ages in Lee County, Alabama, for 17 years. When a child acts out, she lowers her voice, lets the child know they’re safe and tries to get to the root of the problem, she said.
In one case, a boy was frustrated because he was frequently late for class. Revels stepped in and discovered the child was too short to see the combination on his top locker. That day, Revels helped him move all his stuff into a bottom locker.
“Not another tardy, not another problem,” she said.
USA TODAY’s analysis goes much further than a 2007 FBI report scrutinizing the arrests of America’s youngest students. The newspaper’s analysis brings available numbers up to date and provides more detail. It shows that small children arrested at schools are disproportionately male. Nearly two-thirds of the arrests were for assault, and most of the victims in those cases were adult females, presumably teachers and other school staffers.
Meanwhile, Black children were arrested at far higher rates than their numbers in the general population.
This story was produced as part of a collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity and USA TODAY.
Written by Andrea Ball, Dian Zhang, and Mary Claire Molloy
Link to the full article: https://publicintegrity.org/education/criminalizing-kids/young-kids-arrested-at-schools/
