11-year-old has criminal and felony charges against him for kicking trash can in school

1903

Kayleb Moon-Robinson is autistic. This school year is sixth grade for him—at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia. In the fall, when Kayleb was still 11 years old, he was admonished for bad behavior when he kicked a trash can.

A police officer assigned to the school witnessed the tantrum, and filed a disorderly conduct charge against the sixth grader in juvenile court.

Just weeks later, in November, Kayleb, who is African-American, disobeyed a new rule — this one just for him — that he wait while other kids left class. The principal sent the same school officer to get him.

“He grabbed me and tried to take me to the office,” said Kayleb, a small, bespectacled boy who enjoys science. “I started pushing him away. He slammed me down, and then he handcuffed me.”

The cop took Kayleb, in handcuffs, to juvenile court. The cop filed two charges: second misdemeanor disorderly conduct and felony assault on a police officer. Seriously. But, according to The Center for Public Integrity:

US Department of Education data analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity show that Virginia schools in a single year referred students to law enforcement agencies at a rate nearly three times the national rate. Virginia’s referral rate: about 16 for every 1,000 students, compared to a national rate of six referrals for every 1,000 students. In Virginia, some of the individual schools with highest rates of referral — in one case 228 per 1,000 — were middle schools, whose students are usually from 11 to 14 years old. READ MORE