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12/17/2004:

"Racism, Philly Style: Handcuffing 10-year-old girls"

By Dave Lindorff
A four-letter word has been strangely missing from the coverage of the scandal involving the arrest and handcuffing of a 10-year-old fourth-grade elementary schoolgirl in Philadelphia who had been found to have a pair of sharp scissors in her schoolbag.

That word is race.

None of the articles in the city's news coverage of this story mentioned the fact that while little Porsche Brown, like 54 percent of her Philadelphia public school classmates, is African-American, the teacher, who rifled through her knapsack looking for some "good job" stickers missing from her desk and found and then reported the scissors, and the principal, who then authorized her arrest and incarceration by city police-before giving her mother a chance to intervene--are both white. (No stolen stickers were found in the girl's bag.)

For some reason it's important to tell the race of a crime suspect, but not the race of a teacher or a principal whose actions do injury to a child.

At this point, both Philadelphia Police Chief Sylvester Johnson and Paul Vallas, CEO of the city's school system, have issued public and personal apologies to Brown's mother, Rose Jackson--though both offices are still trying to blame the other for the outrageous and uncalled for criminal treatment of a ten-year-old who said she had merely brought the scissors to continue work on a class magazine clipping project.

A spokesman for the school district (which, bankrupt, was taken over by the state last year) claims that the decision to handcuff and arrest Brown, and to throw her unaccompanied into the back of a reportedly urine and blood-stained paddy wagon, was made by Philadelphia police called to the scene by the school's security guard at the behest of the principal. "All we had done was bring her to the principal's office," says the school spokesman, Fernando Gallard.

But a spokesman for Mayor John Street's office, speaking for the police, claimed police only took the girl to the station at the request of the principal, where they insist she was "already being detained." Police insist that the decision to handcuff the girl was a matter of police policy. Under Philadelphia Police policy, all suspects in detention from the age of 10 must be handcuffed, the spokesperson said.

Even there, there was an apparent effort to cover up the extent of mistreatment of this unfortunate and terrified little girl. Police initially claimed that the two female officers who responded to the principal's call, out of concern for the girl's well-being, only handcuffed her in front of her body, and transported her in their patrol car to the detective station. In fact, it has now been confirmed by the mayor's office, Brown was handcuffed behind her back, and was transported, unaccompanied, in the back of a wagon. (Last year, the local daily, the Philadelphia Inquirer, documented how many suspects arrested by police had been seriously injured-even paralyzed-during rides in police wagons, because of their not being secured to seats while cuffed in the van. It is not known whether Brown was belted in during her long ride.)
Full Article: counterpunch.org