‘From the jump, an attack.’ Child trauma experts weigh in on police video @mcps #EastSilverSpringElementary

 

The encounter began calmly enough.

“Come here, buddy,” police officer Kevin Christmon asked a 5-year-old boy who had just run off from his school in Montgomery County, Md.

But his tone quickly turned stern and commanding. He grabbed the boy’s arm to pull him to his squad car. And what followed, experts say, was an extended encounter that didn’t just terrify the child, it ran counter to how police officers — when well-trained and acting properly — can be ideally suited for such situations...

...Adults in the room

Two educators were inside the assistant principal’s office for much of the time that Holliday and Christmon berated the child. Holliday likened the child to a “little beast” and said someone should “crate him.” She called him a “shepherd for the devil,” and asked the educators how the boy could be expelled and moved to a different school. “He got to go somewhere else,” she said.

Hanson, the South Carolina professor, said the educators should never have let the police officers stay in the office: “It seems like it would have been very easy for them to say, ‘Thank you for bringing him back. We’ll take it from here.’ ”

Even after the officers remained there, the educators still could have acted to blunt any emotional damage to the child.

“A kid can go through a pretty stressful or traumatic experience and not result in a trauma reaction or trauma symptoms — if you have the presence of a supportive caregiver,” Griffin said. “So had a school administrator stepped in or somebody said, ‘Hey, this is not okay, you are safe. We’re going to make sure that you’re safe,’ if somebody would have served as a buffer for him, it could have helped him to regulate.”..

Yelling cops missed the chance to comfort a scared 5-year-old, experts say - The Washington Post