Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
ALEX LEARY and THOMAS C. TOBINA police officer, afraid of violating new policies, stood by as a child threw a dangerous tantrum at an afterschool program.
ST. PETERSBURG - A girl, upset over a tetherball game, throws a tantrum during an afterschool program at Fairmount Park Elementary. She stomps on a table, tears things from the wall, pushes a television off a stand.
It's a strikingly familiar scene.
Six months ago, St. Petersburg police made international news by handcuffing a tempestuous Fairmount kindergartener as a video camera rolled.
Last week, police were called to the school again. This time, the officer stood and watched, waiting for the girl's father to arrive.
"He was totally powerless. What's he going to do? Grab her? Handcuff her?" Sgt. Phil Quandt, the officer's supervisor, said Friday. "It'll be like the 5-year-old all over again."
Quandt, also a union official, said new rules created in the outrage that followed the handcuffing have now left police afraid to act. "It needs to be vague enough where our officers, when faced with whatever threat, are able to adequately respond," he said.
The officer's hands-off approach to the Sept. 9 incident - which came to light on Friday - reflects a new policy not to use restraints unless the child is armed or considered violent. The officer acted properly, police spokesman Bill Proffitt said.
Quandt, however, thinks the officer should have felt free to prevent the girl from wrecking the room and perhaps hurting herself. But he understands the officer's reluctance.
The incident also raises fresh questions about who is responsible for the safety of children after class is over, exposing a gray area in the newly forged understanding between police and the school district.
The 8-year-old girl who acted up last week goes to Hamilton Disston School in Gulfport, for children who are severely emotionally disturbed or who have other disabilities such as speech or vision impairments. After school, she is bused to Fairmount for R'Club, a nonprofit learning program.
R'Club operates at Fairmount and more than two dozen other schools in Pinellas. Though it coordinates with the school district on curriculum, the program is independently run and financed.
The call to police last Friday came about 4:20 p.m. The girl got upset after playing tetherball, hit a boy, then kicked off her shoes and stormed out of school, said Art O'Hara, executive director of R'Club. A supervisor called St. Petersburg police, fearing for the girl's safety.
By the time Officer Michael Gattarello Jr. arrived, a club worker had coaxed the girl back to the school. When she saw the police car, O'Hara said, she got frightened and began terrorizing the room. About 60 other students were ushered outside.
The girl, O'Hara noted, was familiar with police since an officer returned her to school about three weeks ago after she ran away.
Gattarello, following the new guidelines, called a sergeant and asked that schools police be called to handle the situation. But those officers stop working at 4 p.m. on Fridays, as opposed to 10 p.m. on other weekdays.
"I continued to stand by while (the girl) tore up the area and awaited her parents' arrival," the officer wrote in a report.
With 19 officers to police the district's 50,000 elementary students, the school force is spread decidedly thin. Still, schools police Chief Tom Gavin said that is not a factor in Friday hours; rather, he said, there are no school programs at that time.
Since R'Club is an independent organization, would school police be responsible anyway?
"That's where the gray area is," said school district spokesman Ron Stone.
Superintendent Clayton Wilcox said his initial impression was that R'Club is responsible for handling such situations after school hours, but he added he wasn't sure about the details. He said the district is taking a look at its agreement with R'Club to see whether it covers this situation. He said he also wants to know more about the training level of R'Club employees.
When the district changed its procedures in the wake of the 5-year-old's handcuffing, a situation like this was not contemplated, Wilcox said. Under the change, district employees are not to call city police for a misbehaving child who is 9 years old or younger or who is in third grade or lower. The only exceptions are when safety is an issue, such as when a student has a weapon.
Police Chief Chuck Harmon was unavailable for comment Friday.
Wilcox said it could be argued that R'Club employees are agents of the district and subject to the same rules and procedures, but he did not know.
"This has given us a little pause," he said. "We're going to look at it real hard first thing Monday morning and see what we can learn.'
Noting that no one was hurt, he said of the incident, "I think it ended as well as it could have ended."
Alex Leary can be reached at 727 893-8472 or leary@sptimes.com