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A PRIL 18, 2012
S EATTLE , W ASHINGTON
V OLUME XXXIV, N O . 16
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C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW
GRAND SLAM
Georgia
6-Yr.-Old
Arrested
Handcuff case
renews school
policing debate
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
By Jeri Clausing
The Associated Press
Vicious Puppies does some break dancing during a break at the 2012 Youth Speaks Poetry Grand Slam Friday, April
13, at the Neptune Theatre.
Accused Soldier Takes the Fifth
Bales won’t participate in military ‘sanity board’ without lawyer
By Gene Johnson
The Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) — The U.S.
soldier charged in the shooting
deaths of 17 Afghan villagers
last month will not participate in
an Army review aimed at deter-
mining his mental state, his
attorney said Friday.
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was
expected to face what’s called a
“sanity board” examination by
Army doctors from Walter Reed
Army Medical Center, seeking
to establish whether he’s com-
petent to stand trial and what his
mental state was at the time of
the March 11 pre-dawn mas-
sacre
in
two
southern
Afghanistan villages.
But his civilian lawyer, John
Henry Browne, said Friday he
instructed Bales to invoke his
Fifth Amendment right to
remain silent because the Army
will not allow Bales to have an
attorney at the sanity board
review and will not allow the
examination to be recorded. The
Army also rejected his request
to have a neuropsychologist on
INDEX
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Bids/Classifieds............3
the board, Browne said.
“A member of the military
does not give up constitutional
rights by being in the military,”
Browne wrote in an email to
reporters. “Since the defense
will have no way to know ques-
tions asked or answers given,
Sgt. Bales’ civilian attorneys
have instructed him to invoke
his Fifth Amendment right to
remain silent and NOT partici-
pate in the sanity board process,
particularly since his Sixth
Amendment right to counsel has
been denied during the board
process.”
Maj. Chris Ophardt, a
spokesman at Joint Base Lewis-
McChord south of Seattle, said
that typically, such examina-
tions are not recorded and
defendants do not have their
lawyers present. Such proceed-
ings are medical, not legal, he
said.
“They want to make sure the
board can ask the questions they
need to ask to make a fair deter-
mination, without any outside
influence,” Ophardt said.
See SOLDIER on page 4
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A New
Mexico teacher asked a 13-year-old girl to
stop talking with her friend and move to
another seat. The girl refused. The teacher
called the police.
The case is among thousands across the
country fueling a long-simmering debate
over when educators should bring in the
police to deal with disruptive students. A 6-
year-old Georgia kindergartner became the
latest test case last week when she was
hauled off in steel handcuffs after throwing
books and toys in a school tantrum.
(See The Skanner News’ series ‘The
School
to
Prison
Pipeline,’
http://www.theskanner.com/article/Suspen-
sions-and-Expulsions-of-Black-Students-
The-School-to-Prison-Pipeline-2012-03-06
)
“Kids are being arrested for being kids,”
said Shannon Kennedy, a civil rights attor-
ney who has filed a class-action lawsuit
against Albuquerque’s public school district
and its police department on behalf of hun-
dreds of kids arrested for minor offenses
over the past few years, including having
cellphones in class, destroying a history
book and inflating a condom.
Police were put in many schools across
the country in the 1990s in response to zero
tolerance policies and tragedies like the
Columbine High massacre. But many over-
whelmed teachers and principals began
turning to those officers to handle discipli-
nary issues that in years past would have
landed students in detention.
Frustrated teachers aren’t getting enough
support from above to deal with increasing-
ly extreme student behavior, from sexual
harassment in elementary school to children
throwing furniture, said Ellen Bernstein,
president of the Albuquerque teachers’
union.
“There is more chronic and extreme disre-
See CUFFED on page 2
String of Child Shootings Continues
Officer’s 10-year-old daughter shoots self with dad’s duty weapon
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The 10-year-
old daughter of a veteran Spokane police
officer was in stable condition after shoot-
ing herself in the leg on Easter with her
father’s duty weapon, authorities said.
Officer Barry O’Connell, an 18-year vet-
eran of the Police Department, has taken
time off to care for his daughter. When he
returns, he will be assigned to desk duty
while an investigation by Spokane County
sheriff’s detectives is under way, police
said.
The girl was at the family home Sunday
when she shot herself in the leg, sheriff’s
Deputy Craig Chamberlin said. She was
taken to a hospital.
Detectives have not determined how she
got the gun or where it was before the shoot-
ing, Chamberlin said.
“We are gathering all the facts to make a
determination if there was anything crimi-
nal,” he said.
After the sheriff’s investigation is com-
plete, O’Connell will face an internal Police
Department investigation into possible poli-
cy violations, police Officer Jennifer
DeRuwe said.
This is the fourth reported child shooting
See GUN on page 2