No, the police should never have pepper sprayed a child. What a bunch of lazy a##holes. There are trained to be able to physically subdue people and they should have been able to do so with a child. Give me a break! I understand the child was out of control but the police should have been able to handle this a little better in my opinion.

I don’t know what really happened but I assume the cop figured he couldn’t subdue the kid physically without facing any kind of liability for touching the child, so I guess he played it safe by not having to use force with the child but still being able to take him under custody.

I wonder if the child has not been diagnosed with any mental illness because the mom has not asked a doctor to screened the child for it. I see a lot of parents saying that they do not know what to do with their kids, in some situations, but it is because they are in denial and have not looked for the help they need.

@goddess–you said what I was thinking with the taser. yikes.

This boy obviously has problems and the mother/parent(s) are in serious denial. I am suspecting that this boy may have been abused and this is how he is acting out. He seems to be going to extremes to attempt to protect himself. A child from a calm, loving home most likely wouldn’t be wielding pointy sticks and screaming the f-word. I have an 8yo, and those words and actions aren’t even in the realm of possibilities in our home.

I would like to think that they could have found a better way – but some eight-year-olds are BIG. I just found a chart online that says that by nine, a boy has reached 75% of his adult height. I don’t know if that’s exactly true, but I do know there are some children in my son’s class (third grade) who are big enough that I could believe they could seriously hurt an adult if they were in a blind rage and armed with a sharp stick. I wouldn’t like to see a child of this age prosecuted for assault, because no matter what their size they haven’t achieved anything like adult decision making yet, but at the same time if this is a kid who has a history of violence and is big enough to really be difficult to subdue and is armed to some degree, using the pepper spray may have seemed like the safest route (especially considering the child himself might have been injured during the struggle).

Its absolutely ridiculous that the cops could not subdue an 8 year old without pepper spray. No 8 year old is that big, that 2 or more cops cannot restrain him in a more humane way. I think it’s a bit unfair to assume this child is being abused when this could just as likely be a medical/psychological problem. Whatever the case, children are our most vulnerable members of society and need to be protected. To me it looks like the police treated the child like any other adult, criminal. Children are owed more care and protection.

I brought up the possibility of abuse since the mother said her son had not been diagnosed with any mental illness and that he was not on any medication. And, yes–abnormal anger, rage and violence in children can result from abuse or from witnessing abuse.

http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/understanding_violent_behavior_in_children_and_adolescents

If the son was tested for mental illness (especially bipolar disorder) or other possible problems (ADD, ADHD, LD) and nothing was found to support a diagnosis, then I would certainly look at the home situation for domestic violence and/or child abuse.

@sophia’s Mom.
The kid was 82 pounds according to the reports.. with his violent tendencies and attacks on teachers… he would have been injured in a struggle with police.
In his raged state, with the cops trying to hold him down, he may have died from positional asphyxiation or excited delirium. No one has died from pepper spray and therefore was the best option available to police.

Pepper spray is much more humane than physical force or a taser.

Get off your high horse about age.. he made a choice to try and kill teachers.. he needs to be dealt with quickly and efficiently with no injury to himself or others. That’s exactly what happened. He has issues but that does not prevent the police from doing their job. That’s what pepper spray is used for.

@ Sophia’s Mom.. you sound like the kid’s mother.. full of denial and willing to blame society.

@Common Sense, the boy weighing 82 pounds, was that in the original article that was linked? Or somewhere else? I missed it. I’m not doubting it, I have seen kids that are bigger than that as well, but I am curious about his size.

My daughter’s teacher is on the petite side, but I have a friend who is a 5th grade teacher and she is only 4″11′ and rather thin. She is tiny in comparison to her students, and there are plenty of younger kids that are a lot bigger.

There were kids who misbehaved and pulled pranks when I was growing up, but to me it seems like there are a lot of students whose behavior is beyond what I ever had imagined.

Let’s be clear: this incident was undoubtedly the result of well-meaning teachers, school staff and police left with no good choices — the REAL problem is the number of children who suffer mental and behavioral problems without help — and in some cases parents who pass on their mental/behavioral problems down the generations through abuse. If we argue about the pepper spray and the size of the kid, we’re totally missing the point, and missing the opportunity to solve the problem.