Parents in Murfreesboro, Tennessee are outraged after children, ages 6-11, were arrested for failing to prevent a fight.
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The arrests took place at Hobgood Elementary School days after the fight. The kids were eventually released from a juvenile center in the area, but community members are absolutely shocked that something like this even happened. Bishop Joseph Walker III, a pastor at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Nashville, said, “It’s unimaginable, unfathomable that authority figures would … do something that has such implications. When we, as a community, are telling our kids don’t get involved in violence and don’t get in harm’s way, (arresting them for not intervening) is the most amazing paradox of our society — and it is devastating to us.”
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Stephanie Bohon, an associate professor of sociology at University of Tennessee-Knoxville, added that while it might be appropriate to ground them or give them detention, putting kids in handcuffs and through the legal system only makes the first lesson that they learn “is the police are there to punish them, and they are not there to help them.”
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Police are looking into the incident and the Murfreesboro police chief stated that they’re using the situation as a learning experience, “a chance to make things better so they don’t happen again.”
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