HOW MANY CHILD ARRESTS ARE TOO MANY?

• Author: Ciaramella, C.J.

AN ORLANDO POLICE officer was fired in September after he handcuffed and arrested a 6-year-old girl at school for throwing a temper tantrum. The arrest sparked national outrage, but it was just a single instance of a widespread problem.

ABC News reported in October that, according to FBI crime data, 30,467 children under the age of 10 were arrested in the United States between 2013 and 2018. During the same period, 266,000 children between the ages of 10 and 12 were arrested.

The good news is that the rate of juvenile arrests has dropped significantly since its peak, from roughly 8,500 arrests per 100,000 individuals between the ages of 10 and 17 in 1996 to 2,400 in 2016. The bad news is that law enforcement officers feel more emboldened than ever to arrest children, thanks to our collective focus on school shootings.

In October, an Overland Park, Missouri, cop handcuffed and arrested an eighth-grader who had formed her fingers into a pretend gun and pointed them at her classmates. "I'll take the heat all day long for arresting a 13-year-old," the Overland Park Police chief told The Kansas City Star. "I'm not willing to take the heat for not preventing a school tragedy."

In August, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Kansas City police officer's handcuffing of a disruptive 7-year-old did not violate the child's Fourth Amendment rights. Meanwhile, the Monroe County State Attorney's...