MURFREESBORO — More than 150 people called for action Sunday after parents said at least five students, ages 6 to 10, were handcuffed at Hobgood Elementary School on Friday.
The students were arrested, accused of not stopping a fight that happened earlier off-campus and later released from the juvenile center on Friday, said the Rev. James McCarroll, pastor of First Baptist Church on East Castle Street in Murfreesboro. The church hosted a community meeting Sunday afternoon about the incident. In addition to angry parents and supporters, Murfreesboro Police Chief Karl Durr and City Manager Rob Lyons were in the crowd.
"There are innocent kids that have been arrested that have been entered in a system they have no business in," said Zacchaeus Crawford, who said three of his children were handcuffed at the school.
"If something needs to be corrected, it will be," Lyons told the crowd."Out of this, we want to learn and make things better so they don't happen again," Durr said. Durr said the city's police department will review the situation, though he did not go into specifics in front of the standing-room-only crowd at the First Baptist Church fellowship hall.
Parents and community members sharply criticized the arrests of the students. They were taken into custody after they did not intervene in an incident that took place in their neighborhood, the parents said.
"This is nonsense, and it is nonsense in the fullest definition," Crawford said.
A video was taken of the incident and officers later obtained arrest warrants for students who did not break up the disturbance, McConnell said in an interview before the Sunday meeting. Information about who took the video and how the police obtained it were not made clear Sunday.
Director of Schools Linda Gilbert and a Murfreesboro City Schools spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about the incident over the weekend.
Christopher Williams, the school safety and education officer at Hobgood on the day of the incident, said that the Hobgood administration and office staff "handled the situation as wonderfully and as good as they could have."
Williams, a First Baptist youth pastor who did not speak for the Murfreesboro Police Department, apologized for what happened and said he still gets emotional about the arrests as the father of a 9-year-old girl.
"I hope we're not setting a precedent where there's a fight and we send everyone and their mom to jail," he said.
Nationally, the number of cases where students were arrested for incidents on campus are plentiful.
One such case in Baltimore parallels the one in Murfreesboro, where four students under the age of 10 were arrested at school for an incident that occurred off campus.
In the 2012 case, Baltimore City police charged four elementary school students with aggravated assault after a fight and were arrested on the Morrell Park Elementary/Middle School campus, according to WBALTV 11.
The American Civil Liberties Union said they were outraged by actions of the officers involved, according to reports. The police department, however, defended their actions saying when there is an arrest that it’s their policy to arrest the individual, regardless of the age, according to Baltimore’s WJZ TV.
In Tennessee, the practices and policies for detaining a student are held at the local police level, according to Maggi Duncan, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police.
In the surrounding area, the arrest of students by Metro Nashville Police officers on campus grounds for off-campus incidents doesn’t happen often and usually takes place at high schools, according to Joe Bass, Nashville schools spokesman
Arrests at any Metro Nashville Public School occurs usually when there’s been a student involved with a major crime. Arrests on school grounds are done in coordination with Metro Police, school resources officers and the school’s principal, Bass said.
He added parents are typically called, especially if it involves younger students.
At the meeting, Crawford told an almost entirely African-American audience that the incident added fuel to tension already present in the community.
Those who spoke at the meeting vowed to follow up on the police investigation. Murfreesboro School Board candidate David Settles said "hell is about to break loose" if the situation isn't handled correctly.
Durr said that he would begin speaking to officers about the incident on Monday.
"I'm here to learn and listen to the needs of this community," said Durr, who received applause after his initial remarks.
Near the end of the meeting, the Rev. Tolbert Randolph, pastor of Providence Baptist Church, asked why the charges against the children could not be dismissed.
"I'm asking in good faith for you to go to the arresting officers and tell them to drop it," Randolph told city officials.
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