Hungry Blues

May 4, 2005

Body of Emmett Till to be exhumed

By Don Babwin
The Associated Press

CHICAGO — Nearly 50 years after 14-year-old Emmett Till's slaying shocked a nation and galvanized the civil rights movement, his body will be exhumed as federal authorities attempt to determine who killed him, the FBI said today.

Till's body, buried in a cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Alsip, will be exhumed within the next few weeks so the Cook County Medical Examiner's office can conduct an autopsy, said Deborah Madden, spokeswoman for the FBI's office in Jackson, Miss.

The U.S. Justice Department announced plans last year to reopen the Till investigation, saying it was triggered by several pieces of information including a documentary by New York filmmaker Keith Beauchamp.

"The exhumation is a logical continuation of that," Madden said. "An autopsy was never performed on the body and the cause of death was never determined."

The plan to exhume the body was first reported in today's Chicago-Sun Times.

Till, who was raised in Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in the tiny Mississippi Delta community of Money on Aug. 28, 1955, reportedly for whistling at a white woman at a grocery store. His mutilated body was found by fishermen three days later in the Tallahatchie River.

Two white men charged with the slaying — store owner Roy Bryant, the husband of the at whom woman Till purportedly whistled, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half brother — were acquitted by an all-white jury. The two, now deceased, confessed to the killing months later in Look magazine.

Beauchamp claimed to have uncovered new evidence in his documentary, "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till."

R. Alexander Acosta, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, has said the documentary films and new information indicates the two had accomplices who may still be alive.

Though the five-year statute of limitations in effect in 1955 means no federal charges could be brought, Mississippi state charges could still apply, Acosta said.

The Till case gave many Americans a closer look at the segregated South, its Jim Crow laws and lynchings. The boy was killed a little over a year after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed state-sponsored school segregation and about 100 days before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the white section of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.

Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted that her son's body be displayed in an open casket at his funeral, forcing the nation to see the brutality directed at blacks in the South at the time. Mobley died in 2003. She is buried next to her son.

The central problem with ALL of the news reports on the Ja'eisha Scott case and with almost all of the commentary is that the case gets viewed as an isolated incident. The reports and discussion turn over the various bits of available information about what happened to opine on the behavior of Ja'eisha Scott, the parenting of Inga Akins, the conduct of teachers Christina Ottersbach and Patti Tsaousis and Assistant Principal Nicole Dibenedetto, the necessity or lack thereof of police in this particular case, and the right or wrong of handcuffing the girl.

Respected groups, like the local chapters of the NAACP and the SCLC, are "cautious on the subject of race, which has crept into the debate over the girl's treatment because she is black."

Black leaders noted that Mark Williams - the veteran police officer heard on the video confronting the girl and directing the handcuffing - is black. So is the school's principal and the police sergeant who arrived on the scene later and put an end to talk that the girl be prosecuted.

Rouson described Williams as a respected member of the community and noted the girl had previous problems at school.

This sort of discussion of racism is about the motivations of individuals. But analyzing a situation for racism is not just about deciding if an individual is behaving in a racist way. It's also about analyzing institutionalized inequalities.

The only public statement I've read that touches upon the institutionalized dimensions of racism is from the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, which is based in St. Petersburg.

"We believe that this act is a symptom of a system with longstanding hostility toward African children," said Uhuru leader Chimurenga Waller, reading from a prepared statement. "Furthermore this hostility has its roots in the desegregation of schools and the subsequent failure to educate African children in Pinellas County."

Readers may wonder what the Uhurus are talking about because none of the news reports:

• mention the alarming number of children under 12 being arrested in the state of Florida as a whole;
• acknowledge that Pinellas County leads the state in these incidents;
• mention that African American children are grossly over-represented among young children who get arrested;
• deem it relevant that Pinellas County has been hit with a class action lawsuit for not educating its African American students; or
• mention other incidents where it appears students have been targeted for abuse by administrators and teachers for no other reason than being African American.

In Pinellas County, Florida, it is standard procedure to call the police on small children who are having behavior problems. It is standard procedure to charge children in Pinellas County with felonies. It is standard procedure in Pinellas County to handcuff children as a means of discipline . It is standard procedure in Pinellas County to use police, criminal charges, and handcuffs disproportionately on African American children: 55% of children under 12 charged with crimes in fiscal year 1999-2000 were African American, though they were only 20.95% of the school age children in the state.

It is standard procedure in Pinellas County, Florida to ignore the cultural differences between African American children and white, European American children and to run schools geared only towards education of the the latter.

On June 23, 1992, thirty-two retiring African American teachers were interviewed by Peggy Peterman, a St. Petersburg Times journalist. Twenty-one years after desegregation they reported that there continued to be a dearth of black role models in the schools and a climate of cultural tensions. They observed that many white teachers are afraid of black students, and black students do not feel comfortable in the predominantly white schools. Even Howard Hinesley, superintendent of schools, acknowledged that whites don't have a significant understanding or appreciation for differences in cultures and a respect for African Americans. "We have culturally ignored some of the issues that bother the (black) students," reported Hinesley. The school board undermined the ability of African American community to transmit its cosmology through the school and endangered African American students by not addressing cultural differences between blacks and whites. The burden of desegregation fell unequally on African American children.

That was the state of things in 1992, but a 2003 study shows that institutionalized racial discrimination is still alive and well in the Pinellas County schools:

Parents alleging in a lawsuit that Pinellas schools discriminate against black students have added new specifics to their claim.

A consultant hired by the plaintiffs concluded that FCAT scores are as much as 28 points lower for blacks than whites, that black students are not promoted at the same rate as white students, and that black students are 3.8 times more likely to be disciplined.

By the time the police arrive and handcuff Ja'eisha it does not matter what color the officers are. Her treatment takes place in a context of persistent inequality and especially punitive attitudes towards African American students. The three white police officers who handcuffed Ja'eisha merely enacted the existing physical and psychological brutality of the school system's white makes right atmosphere. The presence of an African American police officer overseeing the handcuffing does not mitigate the racism inherent in the event.

If this way of talking is a little too abstract for some, let me put it another way. Institutionalized racism promotes individual acts of racism. As an illustration of this principle, take Janice Arthur's complaint that Tyrone Elementary School educators routinely harass her grandchildren, Treazure and Erskine, who are African American. Arthur's complaints are numerous and deeply upsetting—many detailing physical abuse and purposeful neglect of the two children. Among Arthur's allegations is one that a teacher called Erskine a monkey in front of his classmates. The teacher admitted to having done so, and though he was disciplined (how and to what extent is not clear), Area III Superintendent Michael Bissette minimized the incident, saying

It was not the worse [sic] of swear words.

In a climate where the needs of African American students are not on the agenda of the school system, and where school superintendents do not take it seriously when teachers direct racial epithets at their students, racist teachers feel free to abuse African American students. No one tells teachers to behave badly, but they do in a permissive atmosphere. Among the other allegations that Janice Arthur has made are:

• Treazure being suspended for choking a classmate, although she denied the incident. The victim recently confessed Treazure was merely hugging her but she was told by a teacher to say Treazure choked her.
• Children being allowed to hit Treazure, but when she retaliates, she is the only one disciplined. Last week, she was hit in the head with a rock.
• Erskine, who has cerebral palsy, being forced to wear wet clothes all day after being caught in a downpour while walking from one building to another during a recent rainstorm.
• Erskine being forced to participate in a regular physical education class where he is made to run laps despite notes from his physician stating it is causing discomfort and pain in his legs.

Tyrone Elementary School is also in Pinellas County. Michael Bissette, who does not think it's a big deal when teachers direct racial epithets at their students, also oversees Fairmount Park Elementary School. When the Ja'eisha Scott story first broke in mid-March, before the video was released, Bissette was heard making odd excuses for why Fairmount Park called city police instead of district campus police to deal with Ja'eisha Scott:

The assistant principal was in the process of just that [i.e., calling district campus police], he said, but another in a series of outbursts by the girl interrupted her in mid call. When she asked the secretary to call for help, the secretary called city police instead.

This early statement conflicts directly with the April 29 St. Petersburg Times, in which police Chief Chuck Harmon gave "the most detailed account so far of how police came to be called to the school."

On March 14, the day of the taping, the school called city police again after Pinellas schools police could not come.

In the earlier article, no one ever called the district campus police. In the later article, the school called, but district campus police could not come. What the two accounts have in common is that they both deflect responsibility from Assistant Principal Nicole Dibenedetto, who, according to the police report, was disappointed when charges were not made against Ja'eisha Scott.

Could there be a cover up? Are there African American children at Fairmount Park who have been treated like Janice Arthur's grandchildren at Tyrone Elementary? How many arrests and handcuffings of children under twelve have there been at Fairmount Park? I do not know, but concerned citizens should demand some answers.

Examine existing evidence? Ask more questions about what actually happened? Silly me. It's so much easier to sit back and blame Inga Akins and Ja'eisha Scott. Why would anyone want to do anything else?

Monday May 2, 6:22 pm ET
Gary and Hoffler Demand Change from the Pinellas County School District And Police Department in Handling Children
Legal Team Condemn Civil Rights Violations and Police Brutality

STUART, Fla., May 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Prominent attorney Willie E. Gary and his partner CK Hoffler of the Florida-based law firm of Gary, Williams, Parenti, Finney, Lewis, McManus, Watson and Sperando P.L., announced today that they represent five-year-old Ja'eisha Scott, who was handcuffed and shackled by the St. Petersburg County Police Department after having a temper tantrum at school. Gary and his legal team plan to expose the blatant cruel and unusual punishment suffered by their client. Gary and his legal team also call for the police department and the Pinellas County School District to undergo significant reform so that no other child will be handcuffed and shackled for behavioral challenges. In fact, Gary and Hoffler intend to appeal to police departments nationwide to address police brutality against children.

"It is truly unfortunate that an incident like this could happen in today's society," said Hoffler. "There is no excuse for handcuffing and placing shackles on a five-year-old child as a means of discipline.

"It is obvious that this young girl is facing some challenges and handcuffing her, placing shackles on her feet and allowing her to remain in a police car for hours, shackled, is not the answer to her problem," continued Hoffler. "In this instance, the punishment does not fit the conduct of the child and, without a doubt, the police used excessive force and violated this child's civil and human rights."

Both national and international civil rights and human rights leaders as well as state and federal legislators have galvanized to address the atrocity of what happened to Ja'eisha Scott.

"This type of oppression forces us to reflect on the values of this country and the civil rights Rosa Parks fought for," said Gary. "We are seeking justice. It's not right and we intend to do something about it. This issue should be of concern to every parent, mother and father in America because if we allow law enforcement to treat a five-year-old child with behavioral issues as if she were a convicted felon, what's next?"

Gary and his firm are no strangers to seeking justice. They are noted for winning a $240 million verdict in a case against the Walt Disney Corporation for his clients who alleged Disney stole their idea for a sports theme park. In 2001, a jury awarded Gary a $139.6 million verdict for the Maris Distributing Company against Anheuser Busch. In addition, Gary was given a half-billion dollar verdict in Jackson, Mississippi, against the Loewen Group, a large Canadian funeral home chain.

SOURCE Gary, Williams, Parenti, Finney, Lewis, McManus, Watson and Sperando P.L. (Emphasis added.)

These things DO happen to little white girls, too. For example, in 1999, a similar thing happened to Samantha Long, when she was 8.

Samantha was . . . a third-grader who weighed about 60 pounds and has attention deficit disorder and other conditions. She was accused of pushing a teacher's aide, and taken to a "secure seclusion room," a common feature in SED classes. Each of these closet-sized rooms has white walls, a small glass window that can be covered with paper and a safety lock on the door. The idea is to let children throw their tantrums inside, away from sights and sounds that might make them even more aggravated and out of control.

Samantha, dressed in the school's navy and white uniform, didn't want to go into the room. She complained when the teacher's aide who was taking her to the room started removing Samantha's pink-and-white sneakers. She kicked and screamed.

Those kicks earned her an arrest on a felony charge of battery on a school official and a trip to the Juvenile Assessment Center in handcuffs, according to a police report. Samantha was eventually put in a pre-trial diversion program, and told to help her mother around the house.

Indeed, Ja'eisha's story is far from unique. In the fiscal year 1999-2000 4,575 children under 12 were charged with crimes in Florida. That number does not include children like Jai'eisha who are punitively threatened by police and handcuffed but not charged with any crime. Before we even get to the question or race, we've got to wonder why NONE of the news reports place Ja'eisha's story in the context of statewide policies that criminalize children.

In recent decades, the Florida Legislature has toughened its juvenile justice laws. It has pumped up Florida's boot camps and vowed that kids would be punished, not coddled, by a newly formed Department of Juvenile Justice. . . .

This overall crackdown -- largely aimed at teens -- also has had an impact on younger children. . . .

Although a normal battery would be a misdemeanor, the Legislature decided in 1986 that students who commit this same crime against a school employee should be guilty of a felony. School employees can include teachers, aides, bus drivers and others.

The law may make sense when you imagine a 150-pound high school student slugging his spindly math instructor.

But the same law applied to Ruben Toledo, when he was 7 years old and 65 pounds.

And to a 6-year-old boy arrested at Sutherland Elementary School in Palm Harbor in May 1999. He slapped a teacher in the face, knocking off her glasses, and kicked two teachers in the shins. An officer tried to read the boy his rights, but stopped because "I don't feel that he fully understood them." The 6-year-old was arrested and taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center.

This is the legal architecture for turning small children into felons, but Florida's educational and juvenile justice systems go further, restraining small children with handcuffs during interventions to "help" or "protect" them or when administering basic discipline.

Not every change in the juvenile justice system has been designed to punish young criminals more. Over the past decade, the state has set up 17 Juvenile Assessment Centers, or JACs, designed to meet children's needs better.

At these centers, officials can check arrest and school records, and they have time to ask the youths about substance abuse and mental health issues. It's a first step toward getting at the root causes of kids' troubles, an approach hailed by child advocates.

The irony is that when kids are transported to a JAC, they usually come in handcuffs. In Pinellas, that's the center's policy for all delinquent kids -- even if they're 6 or 7. An 8-year-old Pinellas Park boy last month was restrained in a "hobble," a device that encircled his ankles and connected them to a pair of handcuffs behind his back. . . .

The same philosophy applies in schools, when disruptive children need to be removed from class, said David W. Friedberg, director of security services for Hillsborough County schools. He said handcuffing children "is not being done in a punitive sense. . . ."

Fifteen states have taken a different approach entirely, by adopting laws that prevent children under a certain age from being formally charged and prosecuted in juvenile court. In North Carolina, no one under 6 can be charged; in 11 states, the minimum age for prosecution is 10.

But Florida has no minimum age.

I can think of no way to justify this application of Florida law to make it easier to charge children under 12 with felonies. But the liberal use of handcuffs for simple discipline or when transporting children to Juvenile Assessment Centers is an equally serious problem. This heinous practice sends the message to children that all deviations from rules and expectations are, in reality, criminal behavior. You don't ever have to be one of the handcuffed children to understand that to disobey or disappoint is criminal.

Linda Osmundson of the Center Against Spouse Abuse, which is one of the partners in Peacemakers, a Pinellas County anti-violence program for children, has said,

If we can figure out how to teach children at that age to express their needs with their words, and with positive actions and not violent actions, we may be planting a seed that affects them through their life.

When school officials and police handcuff children who express their needs through acting out, the adults teach the children that their needs are illegitimate and criminal. Handcuffing also plants a seed that affects children throughout their lives—a poisonous seed planted by a state that hates its children.

---
Photo: Samantha Long, 9, works on her homework with her mom, Linda. (St. Petersburg Times)

RELATED POST:
What's Race Got To Do With It?

There is a new glimmer of hope that trying Edgar Ray Killen for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner could lead to a more meaningful pursuit of justice than can be had by focusing only on Killen.

Edgar Ray Killen, accused of collaborating with law officers and others in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers, boasted a decade later that he had law enforcement support to carry out violence.

The statement is on a tape of a telephone call Killen made June 21, 1974 — exactly 10 years after the Klan's June 21, 1964, slayings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

Legal experts say the tape, discovered by The Clarion-Ledger in an old court file, could be used as evidence against Killen when he goes on trial June 13. . . .

In a 1999 interview with The Clarion-Ledger, Killen said he had a role in the state's 1958 arrest of Clennon King when King tried to become the first known black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. "We had plainclothesmen there," Killen said. "When they pulled back their coats, they had .45s underneath. That's why (King) went berserk."

Records of the state's now defunct segregationist spy agency, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, show plainclothes officers surrounded King much of the day he was arrested June 5, 1958, after he was refused admission to Ole Miss.

[Don] Cochran said these two statements combined show Killen is saying his relationship was so close with law enforcement officers he could give them orders or conspire with them to carry out violence between 1958 and 1974 — a period that includes the 1964 killings.

Cochran said he believes these statements are admissible — just as was footage prosecutors introduced in the 2002 murder trial of Bobby Cherry for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls.

In that trial, the judge ruled jurors could watch the 1957 footage of Cherry beating the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth after the black preacher tried to enroll his children at an all-white Birmingham school. . . .

With regard to the 1964 killings, the tape of Killen's phone call would provide evidence regarding the plan he reportedly carried out with law enforcement, Cochran said.

Stanley Dearman, a former reporter for The Meridian Star, said Killen's relationship with law enforcement was so close in 1964 he rode in a patrol car and hung out at the Meridian Police Department, where many officers were in the Klan.

(Whole thing, emphasis added.)

Related Articles:
• Preacher refused plea deal in '75
• Statements show Killen's role
• Transcript of 1975 phone conversation

Yesterday's SP Times ran an article titled "Ire aimed at handcuffed girl's mother." The article is in four sections, the first of which reports on public attitudes towards Inga Akins and Ja'eisha Scott. In doing so, the article treats us to an array of attacks on Inga Akins' character and parenting, attacks based only on conjecture. The second section of the article excerpts sentence-long sound bites from a second appearance that Inga Akins and Ja'eisha made on A Current Affair last week.

Curiously, the second half the article, which turns towards investigative reporting and factual information, runs counter to the theme of its title. In the foruth section, Thomas C. Tobin reports on a trip to the apartment complex where Inga Akins was living with her three children at the time St. Petersberg Police handcuffed Ja'eisha in March.

Several of Akins' former neighbors at the apartment complex said they didn't know her well because she left early for work and came home late.

"She was a "good morning, good afternoon' kind of person," said Mariveth Rodriguez, 34, a stay-at-home mom whose children sometimes played with Akins' children.

Neighbors said they did not consider Akins' oldest girl a discipline problem.

Rodriguez said Akins' two daughters sometimes came to play with her children on the back patio, and "they were very well-behaved."

She said she is disturbed by talk-show pundits who have criticized Akins' parenting skills.

"I think they were good people," she said. Asked about the 5-year-old's tantrum, Rodriguez said, "she didn't act like that over here."

In a police report on the handcuffing, officers said Akins arrived at the school March 14, stormed to one of the police cruisers and yelled, "Why is my daughter in a police car?"

Officers said they twice directed the upset mother away from school officials they were trying to interview. The girl's great-grandparents also showed up at the school and argued with police.

Officers eventually released the girl to Akins.

In the second to last section of the article, Tobin unearths some other information about Inga Akins' background. Her daughter Ja'eisha is the big sister to a 4 year old brother and 3 year old sister. Inga Akins is a single mother and works as a certified nursing assistant at a Seminole retirement complex. In 2002, Akins had trouble with a misdemeanor charge and some missed court appearances, which led to her being investigated by the state Department of Children and Families. According to Akins, she passed the DCF review.

In March, at the time when Ja'eisha was handcuffed, Akins was facing an eviction notice, which seems to be related to difficulties she was having with subsidized rent payments from the St. Petersburg Housing Authority. Pinellas County court records show that Akins has been unable to collect child support payments from the two men who fathered her children.

The picture of Inga Akins that emerges is of a young woman who had her first child when she was only 19 years old and has been struggling to make it as a single mother of three small children. She holds down a regular job. Her neighbors have nothing negative to say about her. The mother of children who play with Ja'eisha and her sister says Inga's children are well behaved.

Inga has probably displayed some poor judgment in getting involved with men who are now absentee fathers to her children. It was most certainly poor judgment to give A Current Affair exclusive rights to her story. In the latter case, however, I would surmise that the producers of the TV tabloid took advantage of Inga's financial difficulties and her embattled position, with few allies and advocates to support her and give voice to her position in her and her daughter's conflict with Fairmont Park Elementary School.

When Akins heard a week before the handcuffing incident that Fairmont Park had called in a police officer who threatened Ja'eisha with handcuffs, Akins told the school to stay away from her daughter. When Akins arrived at Fairmont Park on March 14 and found her daughter in the back of a police car, she yelled at school officials. These are responses of a parent who is appropriately protective of her daughter.

Recall the comments of clinical psychologist Patricia J. Shiflett:

"A normal tantrum would be verbal refusal to obey, to cry or scream and to do that for a brief period of time, maybe five or 10 minutes . . ."

This was "an example of extreme fight or flight," a response in which "you either run from or you fight with what you perceive as dangerous . . ."

Could it be possible that Inga Akins was doing a fine job parenting Ja'eisha Scott, despite challenging circumstances? Could it be possible that Ja'eisha is a perfectly pleasant, generally well-behaved little girl in most situations? Is it possible that when she was at Fairmount Park, Ja'eisha faced hostilities from teachers and/or the assistant principal that made the five year old reactive in ways that she had no cause to be elsewhere?

There are many more facts to suggest yes on all counts than there is evidence of any deficiencies in Akins' parenting or Ja'eisha's character.

RELATED POST:

• What's Race Got To Do With It?

Posted Friday, April 29, 2005
Florida, others reopen civil rights death cases
Gov. Jeb Bush asked state law enforcement officials to open the half-century-old civil rights murder case of Johnnie Mae Chappell, following a regional trend.
By AUDRA D.S. BURCH
aburch@herald.com

William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation

Nearly a half-century after the civil rights movement, a new generation of prosecutors and state officials -- some born after the era ended -- is reexamining some of the South's worst hate crimes.

This week, Gov. Jeb Bush asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to review the case of Johnnie Mae Chappell, a black woman murdered on her way home 41 years ago in Jacksonville. In February, state Attorney General Charlie Crist reopened the case of a Mims activist couple murdered in 1951.

Cases all over the Deep South -- Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and now Florida -- are being reopened despite aging suspects and witnesses. Over the past decade, more than a dozen white supremacists have been convicted in killings during the Civil Rights era.

''Time is running out,'' says Penny Weaver, spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group that tracks hate crimes. ``There's just a few cases left, and time or age should not matter.''

Chappell's admitted shooter, J.R. Rich, was convicted and served time, but charges were eventually dropped against three other suspects, all of whom are still alive. For its brutality and suspicion of police corruption, the case came to symbolize the danger of the civil rights struggle in Jacksonville and the rest of the South.

The Poverty Law Center counts about 15 remaining known civil rights ''cold'' cases of crimes committed between 1954, when the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation, and 1968, the year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Civil rights experts say this number is but a fraction, though, as it includes only cases with enough details to be investigated.

''Justice is one of those broad and interesting words that in real life sometimes means very little, but if you are talking about healing, you have to open these cases, pursue them and give the families a final chapter,'' said Susan Glisson, director of the University of Mississippi's William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation.

ASKS FOR `A REVIEW'

In a letter sent Wednesday to FDLE Commissioner Guy M. Tunnell, Bush asked for ''a review, investigation and determination as to whether enough evidence exists today to support the filing of criminal charges'' against three men who were indicted but were never tried for lack of evidence in the slaying of Chappell. Crist's office also is reviewing the case.

The FDLE was asked to review the Chappell case once before, in 1979, at the request of then-Gov. Bob Graham. The office concluded the case should be officially reopened, but no action was taken, and it is not clear why. Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre said he thought the FDLE examined allegations of police corruption, rather than details of the actual murder.

In December, state Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, asked Bush to appoint a special prosecutor to the case. A Herald article published April 19 brought new attention to the case. ''I am sure the governor is treading cautiously, making sure everything is in order, but we have been here before,'' Hill said. ``For the life of me, I cannot understand how four people were involved and only one person went to trial.''

In 1964, Johnnie Mae Chappell was walking along Jacksonville's New Kings Road, looking for a wallet she had lost while buying ice cream for her children. As race riots raged miles away, Chappell was shot, and Rich confessed he was the gunman.

Over the years, the Chappell family and Lee Cody, a sheriff's deputy who arrested the men, have fought for justice. Their efforts have largely stalled in state offices until now.

Hill said he is exploring filing a bill during the current legislative session to award the surviving Chappell children reparations.

Civil rights cold cases are typically an uphill battle for surviving family members and activists who help them. With decades gone by, prosecutors are hobbled by lost time, records and evidence.

(Whole thing.)

On Wednesday, St. Petersburg, FL Police Chief Chuck Harmon gave the fullest account so far of how police ended up at Fairmount Park Elementary School on March 14, 2005.

On March 7, a week before the handcuffing, Officer [Mark] Williams [who is Black] left his business card at Fairmount during a call unrelated to the girl.

The next day, school officials were struggling with disciplining Akins' daughter, Harmon said. They tried to call Akins and the girl's grandmother. They also tried to call Pinellas schools police, he said.

Getting no response, they called city police. But a police supervisor canceled the call, Harmon said, probably concluding the call was not appropriate for police to handle.

In frustration, he said, the school used Williams' business card and called him on his cell phone. Williams responded and spoke to the girl about "good choices, bad choices, that sort of thing," Harmon said. "At some point he did display his handcuffs to her."

He said the department will look closely at the nature of that conversation. If the handcuffs were used to intimidate the girl, he said, "that's against our policy and we don't do that."

On March 14, the day of the taping, the school called city police again after Pinellas schools police could not come (emphasis added).

Williams heard the call, was familiar with the girl and "decided on his own to respond," Harmon said. Williams was with an officer in training. Another unit with two additional officers responded to the call officially, bringing the total to four.

Harmon said he did not know why a police supervisor did not cancel the call, as was done a week earlier.

Williams is the officer heard on the tape saying to the girl before her handcuffing: "You need to calm down. You need to do it now. Okay?"

This account raises further questions about how and why police got involved in Ja'eisha Scott's problems at Fairmount Park Elementary School. In the initial SP Times story, from March 18, before the release of video footage, Pinellas County school district Area III superintendent Michael Bessette, who oversees Fairmount Park and several other schools, agreed that the school should have called district campus police to intervene.

The assistant principal was in the process of doing just that, he said, but another in a series of outbursts by the girl interrupted her in mid call. When she asked the secretary to call for help, the secretary called city police instead.

Bessette's explanation is quite different from Harmon's, above, in boldface. Chief Harmon's explanation is simpler and easy to believe at face value. Bessette's explanation is complicated and sounds a little far-fetched. Both explanations deflect responsibility from Assistant Principal Nicole Dibenedetto. Where does Mr. Bessette's version of the story come from, if the Pinellas schools police were called but could not come.

The police report indicates that Ms. Dibenedetto was DISAPPOINTED when charges were not filed against the five year old girl. If Ms. Dibenedetto did not intend for the city police to be called, then she would not have had criminal charges in mind. I think there is reason to give further scrutiny to Nicole Dibenedetto's role in having city police come to Fairmount Park. Surely both the District Campus Police and the St. Petersburg Police must have phone logs that might clarify who called what agency when.

HungryBlues commenter Blackwell Raines has a historically informed, clear-sighted perspective on the inexcusable treatment of Ja'eisha Scott.

The incident is St Petersburg, Florida is worthy of us reflecting deeply upon ourselves and the society as a whole. This blog allows a dialogue of the civilization to be effected, which is most often sorely missing. This topic of which I speak is the handicuffing by police of a 5-year-old kindergartener.

The handcuffing by strangers, regardless of a 5-year-old's behavior is a horrific, act of terror. In fact, if done by family members themselves, in a punitive manner, it would be such--even judged deeply disturbed. Why? Well, if every such young child was dealt with in a similar way, when behavior was described as inapprorpiate, imagine the lifetime of emotional scarring. And this is the reason behind middle class children never having to face such treatment--middle class white children, that is. But minority children seem to draw a particular harsh set of responses from those in charge--one of contempt, one of brutish reaction, and brooding resentment.

Historically, there is nothing new to to such traumatizing and coercive display of force, even against the very young, St Petersburg or anywhere in the state. Florida's past is littered with attacks on minority children, black children in particular. In the days of legal segregation, black children as young as 6-years-old could end up in "convict-lease" system, a conscripted prisoner system, in which work on private projects, such as road construction, was mandatory, six days a week. (PBS.org) Only black children, and latino children, and the occasional poor white kid, were effected. Such a thing was unthinkable to have happen to the middle class white child.

Individuals may not know their history, the state may elect to exclude such historical facts from hand-picked history books, but institutions, such as police forces, and schools, carry on business as usual, acting smugly and justifiably to criminalize whenever and wherever they deign to do so.

No unbiased, rational thought can justify criminalizing a 5-year-old in the name of orderliness. Equally, no society can support the brutalization of its youngest, and expect healthy adults. More, no society can call itself decent and democratic, and yet find ways to crush those of color.

Remember, one police officer, confidently stated that he had given the child's mother an earlier warning--next time, handcuffs. To make doubly good on that warning, the little girls's hands and feet were cuffed. Now, imagine a little blond white girls in those cuffs.

Remember John Kerry, Hypocrite Opportunist? Here's another chapter from the same story:

“This is the first time I have ever known that the Democratic Party almost totally ignored the Black Press as far as advertising in its publications,” says Dorothy Leavell, publisher of the Chicago New Crusader. “They did this targeted kind of advertising in battleground states and ignored the rest of the Black Press.”

Two months before November’s election, NNPA Chairwoman Sonny Messiah-Jiles wrote a letter to DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, pressing him about ad dollars that he’d promised the Black Press.

“Well, we are in the final 60 days and there is a lot of work to be done. Unfortunately, the National Newspaper Publishers Association has not heard from the DNC regarding its advertising plans. As a result, I am sending you the proposal previously submitted in June, 2004 by the National Newspaper Publishers Association to ensure The Black Press of America is a part of the strategic advertising campaign to educate and mobilize voters to go to the polls and vote in November,” she wrote. “During a meeting with the leadership of NNPA, [Democratic Presidential Candidate] Senator [John] Kerry and you both made a vow to advertise with The Black Press of America in a big way. Considering during the last presidential election, the Democratic candidate made a promise to advertise in Black newspapers and did not follow through, I am sending you another copy of our proposal in an effort to avoid history repeating itself and remind you of the commitment.”

(Whole thing.)

Could anything like this be the background for what happened to Ja'eisha Scott at Fairmount Park Elementary School? As Marian Douglas has been saying, Ja'eisha's case and the large number of related incidents ought to be international HUMAN RIGHTS scandals.

Treazure And Erskine: Victims Of Troubled Discipline In Our Schools?
by Tracie Reddick
The Weekly Challenger

Challenger Correspondent
ST. PETERSBURG - Janice Arthur was not surprised by a videotape depicting a 5-year-old student at Fairmount Elementary School being arrested and handcuffed by police officers (emphasis added).

''Black kids are mistreated every day in Pinellas County schools,’’ she said (emphasis added).

Arthur recently filed a complaint with the Florida Department of Education against educators at Tyrone Elementary School, who she says routinely harass her grandchildren, Treazure Kitchen and Erskine Cross. She has a stack of referrals to back the allegations she cited that included:

• Both Treazure and Erskine were accused by Tyrone administrators of stealing. School officials referred the incident to the state attorney's office, which has recommended she attend a Juvenile Arbitrition Program. Arthur does not want her to become part of the criminal justice system.

• Treazure being suspended for choking a classmate, although she denied the incident. The victim recently confessed Treazure was merely hugging her but she was told by a teacher to say Treazure choked her (emphasis added).

• Children being allowed to hit Treazure, but when she retaliates, she is the only one disciplined. Last week, she was hit in the head with a rock (emphasis added).

• A teacher using profanity in the classroom.

• Administrators allegedly telling Treazure to enroll in another school.

• Erskine, who has cerebal palsy, being forced to wear wet clothes all day after being caught in a downpour while walking from one building to another during a recent rainstorm.

• Erskin being forced to participate in a regular physical education class where he is made to run laps despite notes from his physician stating it is causing discomfort and pain in his legs.

• A teacher calling Erskine a monkey in front of his classmates (emphasis added).

Arthur has relied on a cadre of community leaders to accompany her or make calls on her behalf in this case. They include NAACP Director Darryl Rouson, Retired Educator Adelle Jemison, Rev. Preston Leonard and Rev. Alvin Miller and KINFOLKS, an agency that advocates for black children in foster care and kinship care arrangements.

''They say they want black parents to get more involved in the schools and that's what I'm doing,’’ Arthur said ''But, it's like I'm being punished because I am questioning the way they are treating my grandchildren'' (empasis added).

Not so, said Area III Superintendent Michael Bissette, who does not believe Arthur’s grandchildren are being targeted by Tyrone teachers. ''They are not all bad people,’’ he said. ''Teachers don’t choose a career in education to pick on kids.’’

Nevertheless, Bissette noted preliminary investigations into Arthur’s allegations revealed a Tyrone teacher admitting to calling Erskine a monkey (emphasis added). He has since been disciplined, along with another teacher who used profanity in the classroom.

''It was not the worse of swear words,’’ said Bissette, noting the other incidents outlined by Arthur are under investigation.

Meanwhile, a breakdown in communication between Arthur and Tyrone officials is evident, Bissette said. ''It’s not working and we have to figure out how to fix it,’’ he said.

Part of the problem could be that Arthur no longer trusts Tyrone teachers and is relying too much on what her grandchildren are saying, Bissette explained.

On the flipside, there is a top administrator at Tyrone who is determined ''to teach these kids how to behave,’’ and she has been asked to remove herself from the discipline equation, he said (emphasis added).

On a recent visit to Tyrone, Bissette observed Erskine in the classroom. Other than being fidgety, the boy was not disruptive, he said.

Arthur explained Erskine’s leg brace causes his leg to cramp and she has asked teachers to allow him to stretch, but they want him to remain seated.

Texas A&M Professor Gwendolyn Webb-Johnson raised a similar point during a recent conference at the University of South Florida focusing on the black family and child.

''Our kids are socialized to be vibrant,’’ said Webb-Johnson. ''They are taught from a young age to move and shake. But when they go to school they are told to shut up, sit down and don’t move.’’

Webb-Johnson stated black children are victims of racial profiling in the classroom and schools need to adopt a ''culturally responsible pedagory’’ (emphasis added).

''It’s different teaching Moesha, Tameka, Pokey and Boo-boo,’’ added AME Bishop Vashti McKenzie. ''You cannot develop the same game plan for Pokey as you do for Myrum, Hyrum and William and Byrum. You have to take our kids from where they are before you take them to where you want them to go.’’

That’s all Arthur wants for her grandchildren Although Bissette believes it may be in her grandchildren’s best interest to enroll them at a different school, Arthur believes they have a right to remain at Tyrone.

''Treazure is a strong girl,’’ Arthur concluded. ''She may be the one that can stand there and take it so that other people can see how black kids are being mistreated at Tyrone.''

Judge expands school lawsuit

In giving the lawsuit class-action status, a judge rules Pinellas schools have failed to narrow the achievement gap for black students

By RON MATUS, Times Staff Writer
Published July 2, 2004

ST. PETERSBURG - A lawsuit charging Pinellas County Schools with failing to educate black children was granted class-action status Thursday.

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge James Case made the ruling in a case filed nearly four years ago on behalf of William Crowley, who is black, and his son Akwete Osoka, then a second-grader at Sawgrass Lake Elementary School.

The decision means the suit now represents all 21,000 black students in Pinellas and all black children who attend the county's public schools in the future. . . .

The suit says the district has failed to narrow a yawning achievement gap between black and white students, in violation of the equal protection clause in the state Constitution. It asks the district to craft a solution. . . .

Lawyers for the school district also have argued that the lawsuit should not be granted class-action status because the circumstances of each child's success or failure can be different. But Case rejected that argument, concluding the plaintiffs are arguing that the system has failed to meet its constitutional duty to provide a "high-quality" education to black students.

"Although individual cases reinforce the statistical data, it is the system as a whole that is being challenged, not how that system has dealt with a particular student on an individual basis," the judge wrote.

Case wrote in his order that the plaintiffs "have cited an overabundance of statistical evidence indicating that black students are achieving far below white students in every category and are receiving statistically significantly more discipline referrals than their white counter-parts."

Racism and tourism have been persistent factors in St. Petersburg. Although, as social conditions changed, the city also altered its strategies to extract profits from tourists and to restrict African American contact with them. After the 1964 Civil Rights act dismantled the legal segregation of African Americans, the city of St. Petersburg could no longer pass blatantly racist resolutions. Therefore, city officials relied on subtle policies such as urban redevelopment schemes and interstate highways to discriminate against African Americans and attract tourists. Combined with hostile desegregation, the city either altered, destroyed, or divided the African American community to develop its tourist economy. Social networks and relations among African Americans were sacrificed. . . .

Almost twenty years after the Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools in Brown vs Topeka Board of Education, Pinellas county desegregated its schools. African Americans considered a major barrier to an open society had fallen. However, their children and communities would pay a heavy price for challenging the power structure of St. Petersburg and the county. Laws changed de jure segregation, but did not alter the years of conditioning that led whites to assume that African Americans were inferior. Therefore, their children were suspended, expelled, disproportionately placed in "emotionally handicapped classes" and given few opportunities to see African Americans in positions of importance. In 1980, nine years after the schools were desegregated, Doreatha Bennett, a parent, observed that in her granddaughter's school, there were no black students in leadership. She and others in the community concluded that black students were treated unequally in the schools. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ensured that they would forever be a minority by limiting their population in each school to a maximum of 30 percent. By 1980, eleven of the 33 middle and high schools did not have black administrators and black teachers comprised 11.6 percent of the population (the affirmative action goal was 15.8 percent). On June 23, 1992, thirty-two retiring African American teachers were interviewed by Peggy Peterman, a St. Petersburg Times journalist. Twenty-one years after desegregation they reported that there continued to be a dearth of black role models in the schools and a climate of cultural tensions. They observed that many white teachers are afraid of black students, and black students do not feel comfortable in the predominantly white schools. Even Howard Hinesley, superintendent of schools, acknowledged that whites don't have a significant understanding or appreciation for differences in cultures and a respect for African Americans. "We have culturally ignored some of the issues that bother the (black) students," reported Hinesley. The school board undermined the ability of African American community to transmit its cosmology through the school and endangered African American students by not addressing cultural differences between blacks and whites. The burden of desegregation fell unequally on African American children. Perhaps more devastating, the city's development plans destroyed communities. The preservers and anchors of culture were scattered and estranged by the planned destruction of the community. Hence, the African American community faced tremendous odds. As early as 1975, the African American community was physically separated by an interstate highway. . . .

The transmission of indigenous knowledge by a community to its youth endows them with the values of the group. Without a sense of continuity, the individual exists without appropriate skills for living. . . . When traditional means are no longer available to affirm one's sense of identity, alternatives are sought. . . . [T]he current rise in crime among youths is directly related to the disruption of their neighborhoods. African Americans, perceived as a threat to tourism, led city officials to create buffers between downtown and the black community. However, the city's plans backfired. The Suncoast Dome, renamed Thunder Dome is without a team. And many of African American youths the city sacrificed are creating havoc. They are endangering their own lives and the safety and security of citizens and tourists. However, it was the city's love for tourist dollars and its hate and fear of African Americans that created the problems the community faces.

(Evelyn Newman Phillips, Bus To Destiny: An Ethnohistorical Analysis of the Political Economy of Ethnicity Among African Americans in St. Petersburg, Florida, CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS, emphasis added.)

Why did the SP Times wait six days to introduce thoughtful, professional comments about understanding Ja'eisha's behavior?

"A normal tantrum would be verbal refusal to obey, to cry or scream and to do that for a brief period of time, maybe five or 10 minutes," said Patricia J. Shiflett, a St. Petersburg clinical psychologist with 20 years' experience.

This?

This was "an example of extreme fight or flight," a response in which "you either run from or you fight with what you perceive as dangerous," Shiflett said.

In "extreme fight or flight," the stress of the situation is too overwhelming for the child to manage.

"It may be the collective stress in the child's life, not just stress at the school," she said.

None of the psychologists went as far as to diagnose the girl. Ethically, they could not.

"It really is a snapshot," Pinto said. "We don't know anything about the particulars of the child, the classroom and the adults that are available to serve as resources."

Because of student confidentiality, no one, except Pinellas County Schools, knows.

That piece of information, Shiflett said, is key to understanding the best way to deal with unusually agitated children.

"It's important to evaluate the child and the stressors in the child's life, any medical problems or other reasons why the child is having this kind of reaction," she said.

And about what might have been an appropriate response from the assistant principal, Nicole Dibenedetto?

Midway through the tape, the girl makes her first and only declarative statement: "I want to go with my teacher." She was told no, that she had made the room "unsafe" for her teacher and classmates.

Weinberg said this "was an interesting moment of opportunity" for assistant principal Nicole Dibenedetto and teacher Patti Tsaousis.

"I would have liked to have thought that they would've said, "Would you like to see your teacher?' and see what she said and to try to give her successive choices where she could get what she wanted as long as we sort of staged those choices in a way that got her to calm down," he said. . . .

The idea, Weinberg said, is to get children to verbalize their feelings, rather than act out.

"If the student says something, we know that if you can take the feelings and the anger and the angst, and put those feelings and thoughts into words, rather than channel it into behavior, then you're onto something."

Why did the SP Times only excerpt the parts of the video that sensationalize the conflict between Ja'eisha, the teachers, principal and police?

Why didn't the SP Times include the beginning of the video to shed some light on the possible causes of Ja'eisha's reaction to her teacher?

RELATED POSTS:
Arresting Children Under 12 In Florida
It's a statewide epidemic, and Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, leads the state, along with Hillsborough County, in arresting children under 11 years old.

What's Race Got To Do With It?

Focus On Pinellas County Schools
• "Black kids are mistreated every day in Pinellas County schools"

• Class Action Suit: "the district has failed to narrow a yawning achievement gap between black and white students, in violation of the equal protection clause in the state Constitution."

• Criminalizing Children In Florida

Things You May Not Have Read About The Ja'eisha Scott Case
• Accounts Of Police Involvement In Ja'eisha Scott Case Raise New Questions About Assist. Principal Dibenedetto's Intent

• "I think they were good people . . . [Ja'eisha] didn't act like that over here."