Claire Bernish | The Free Thought Project
Parkland, WA — An 8-year-old elementary school student involved in what would have been considered an ordinary playground fight just a decade ago, had his hands pulled behind his back and cuffed by a school resource officer — and the boy’s outraged mother is speaking out.
Amanda Bullinger told Seattle NBC affiliate KING she was summoned to Brookdale Elementary School in Parkland on Monday after her son, Ayden, scuffled with an older student who had been bullying the boy for months.
“It was like 11:15-ish that I got a call. It was the principal,” Bullinger told the station. “She said she had Ayden in the office and he had an altercation at recess.”
Bullinger drove to the school to retrieve Ayden, but had no idea what a disturbing scene awaited.
“I get there and I see a police car in the parking lot, and I said, ‘Oh this can’t be good.’ I go into the office and Ayden is sitting in a chair, hands cuffed behind his back and a police officer is holding him down like this,” she explained to KING. “And Ayden is bright red crying, freaking out.”
Not even a decade old, the understandably frightened child also struggles with sensory processing disorder, according to Bullinger, which means intense situations can cause Ayden to suffer extreme anxiety or ‘emotional meltdowns.’
According to NBC affiliate KOBI, “Federal privacy laws prohibit the school from discussing details, but a police report about the incident shows Ayden yelling ‘I’m going to kill him’ and became physically combative to the other boy.”
Bullinger noted her son had grown tired of months of bullying by the older child and the situation reached a boiling point on the school’s playground.
Thanks to the suffocating police state, what would likely have been a bitter student brawl broken up by students and teachers in the past instead saw an 8-year-old child handcuffed by an officer and forcefully restrained — as if a schoolyard fight is no longer typical childhood behavior.
“It really is one of those options of last resort, if you will,” Willie Painter, spokesman for Franklin-Pierce Schools, explained to KING.
Watch the video below: