MOUNT JULIET, Tenn. — A system put in place to ensure students’ safety failed, and a mother is demanding answers after her daughter was injured in a fight Wednesday morning.
No Tape of Incident Exists as School Bus Camera Was Not Working During Beating
The Mount Juliet school district
worked recently to increase security on its buses, but a camera wasn’t working when the fight occurred.
Kathy Kilpatrick’s 14-year-old daughter was beaten by another teenager while on a Wilson County school bus, she said, but no tape of the incident exists. The ninth grader, Kendall, received a bloody forehead, which required 10 stitches.
The bus was headed to Wilson Central High School when Kendall said the other female student, whom she had argued with days before, started beating her.
“I didn’t push her. I may have touched her a little bit, and then she just threw the first punch and kept going,” said Kendall.
Kendall was suspended for one day. The other student, a 16-year-old, was suspended for five days and won’t be allowed to ride the school bus for a month. But Kendall’s mother said she isn’t satisfied and wants the other girl kicked out of school.
“There needs to be bullying laws in place. It’s absolutely ridiculous that our children have to go to school and be subject to this kind of violence on the school bus,” said Kathy Kilpatrick.
The school bus camera wasn’t working, so the punishments were based on what school officials were told.
A substitute school bus driver was at the wheel when the incident occurred, and the school system said that a mistake was made.
“The cameras have to be loaded and locked down, and for some reason, that device had not been locked down so it could record. That has been corrected,” said schools director Mike Davis.
Kilpatrick has filed assault charges against the child involved in the attack. Kendall said she won’t change schools because she likes Wilson Central High School.
http://www.wsmv.com/news/24858860/detail.html
Tags: school bus beating
|
By Jason A. Kahl
Reading Eagle
|
||
|
An 18-year-old man was hit in the head with a brick after several fights erupted near Reading’s new Citadel intermediate high school shortly after students were dismissed Thursday afternoon, police said. The victim suffered a cut to the side of his head and was taken to Reading Hospital, city police said. They did not release his name, so information on his condition could not be obtained. The suspect, a 15-year-old city boy whose name police did not release because he is a juvenile, was committed to the Berks County Youth Center in Bern Township on aggravated assault and related charges. Police were in the area watching students leave the school at the site of the former St. Joseph Medical Center at 12th and Walnut streets when several fights erupted. Police said the main fight was near 10th and Walnut. Several other fights broke out in the area about the same time. According to investigators: Officers got a description of the boy with the brick and spotted him in the 800 block of Buttonwood Street. They chased him several blocks through yards, alleys and breezeways. They took him into custody in a yard in the 1000 block of Walnut Street. At least one other person may have been injured in the main fight, but police did not have any other details. The fights happened just two days after the $80 million school opened for classes. The school has 300 rooms and was designed to serve 3,000 ninth- and 10th-graders. It was also intended to help alleviate overcrowding at Reading High School a few blocks away. Police said they do not know if the boy who was arrested or the others in the fight are students at the new school. Police said the only other problem they’ve encountered since the school opened is with traffic on 12th Street near the old emergency room entrance to the hospital, which went from a one-way to a two-way street. |
||
A girl choking a smaller boy was tasered by police when she refused to let go.
A fight between two students at Westlake Middle School in Apex Monday ended with a girl being tased.
Police say they tried to break up the fight themselves at first, but they were unsuccessful.
Cary Deputy Police Chief Barry Nickalson says the school’s resource officer tried talking to the girl, using pressure points to loosen her grip, even tried to pry her arm loose, but when none of that worked he used a taser.
“He deployed it and immediately it was effective,” Nickalson said.
Police say if the officer did not step in, the girl may have killed a little boy.
“Our victim was basically dangling from being choked,” Nickalson said. “The way we see this, is we saved a life yesterday as a result of using this tool. Other techniques were just not effective.”
ABC11 Poll
However, some are skeptical about the actions that were taken.
“How big was the child that was tasered,” parent Noel Myricks said. “I think all parents would hope that the person who tasered the child exercised good judgment.”
“I think they could have like, pulled her off the kid,” said Joe Goolden, a high school junior. “It’s a middle school student; she couldn’t have been that strong.”
But the police chief disagrees.
“Sometimes people have superhuman strength and that doesn’t necessarily depend on your age or your size or your build,” Nickalson said.
He says the use-of-force policy at schools for Cary police is no different from the policy they use on the streets.
It’s the same with every other agency which provides SRO’s to schools. Currently, there is no system-wide policy on use of force.
The policy for use-of-force at Wake schools is currently set by the town or city the school is located in.
The director for Wake County schools says that’s the way it needs to be.
“I don’t feel like we’re in a position to tell them how to operate their police departments,” the director said.
However, Wake County School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta says he thinks there should be more uniformity between schools and says the board will take a look at that down the road.
Tags: choking student, student tasered
Three Woodland High School Students were booked into juvenile hall on battery charges for fighting during lunchtime Wednesday.
Seven units responded to WHS at 12:51 p.m. for a report of a fight that broke out during a game of handball. Police are still investigating what prompted the fight but WPD Sgt. Anthony Cucchi said three boys, all around the age of 15, attacked another boy. The victim suffered a bump on his head that required no medical attention.
Associate superintendent Mike Stevens said vice principal Christy Gardner was the first to respond and was able to separate the boys before the cops arrived.
Stevens said all four of the boys involved in the altercation were suspended and two face expulsion because they have been in trouble in the past.
When police responded about 14 kids from a nearby P.E. class were watching the fight and had to be separated by police.
www.dailydemocrat.com
A fight broke outside the Frayser High School cafeteria Tuesday, shortly after 11am. Police were called and arrested two 18-year-old students. Five others were taken to juvenile court.
“My friend’s brother told me he wanted a one-on-one. So I waited till school to start, and after lunch, started a fight,” said Latravis Vinson, a 15-year-old who was taken to juvenile court Tuesday.
He said that he “wasn’t thinking,” and that he’s learned a “good lesson” from this experience, which caused him and six others to be suspended for up to 180 days, on top of criminal charges.
“Stupid. Got kicked out of school. It’s a stupid decision,” he said.
Vinson said he wasn’t the one brought the knife to school. Even with the dangers involved and now the consequences at hand, he said he does not have anything to say to the other boys involved in the fight.
His mother said the school has yet to tell her what happened. She had to call her son’s cell phone to see why he hadn’t come home on time before she found out he was in trouble.
The mother of another student said she would have like to see authorities handle the situation differently. Missouri Milam is the mother of 18-year-old Kenny Lockheart, who was arrested on charges of assault with bodily injury and inciting to riot.
“I found my son, along with several more young men that go to school up there, in handcuffs,” Milam said.
She said that Lockheart has a learning disability and would not be fully aware of what was going on. Her understanding of the situation is that Lockheart was walking out of the cafeteria when he was hit.
She does not think her son should have been charged. “My child ain’t no saint. You know, I know all children got their own ways, but I know the way this was handled could have been better than the way it was.”
“I really don’t think that’s right. They should have found out from everybody who started it, what it was for, and why,” she said.
Neither Vinson nor Lockheart’s mother said that they were involved in gangs, but the reports show gang affiliations for all the detained suspects.
Memphis City Schools said that they normally run metal detector tests for all students entering at the start of school, 7:30am, until about 9:00am. Occasional random checks are made after that point, but it’s possible the student with the knife arrived on campus later Tuesday morning.
Memphis City Schools says they’re working with police to try and keep campuses safe and to curb or eliminate gang culture.
Tags: knife fight, memphis, school, TENNESSEE
Oakland police arrested a 49-year-old man early Friday morning after he burst into Children’s Hospital in Oakland brandishing a gun and took a nurse hostage minutes after an attempted carjacking, Oakland police said.
Cottrell Broadnax, an Oakland resident, was arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment, possessing a firearm as an ex-felon and attempted carjacking, Oakland police Officer Jeff Thomason said.
Officers quickly responded to the hospital around 3:30 a.m., and Broadnax surrendered after police formed a perimeter of patrol rifle officers, police said. There were no injuries reported during the incident.
Hospital spokeswoman Erin Goldsmith said when Broadnax entered the hospital he “appeared to be disturbed or disoriented,” but he did not have his gun drawn as he strode past the trauma center’s front desk.
“It all happened really fast,” said Goldsmith, who said only eight minutes elapsed between when Broadnax entered the emergency room and when Oakland police apprehended him.
As for the nurse held hostage by Broadnax, Goldsmith said “she really responded admirably and professionally.”
While Goldsmith said the response time of police and the hospital’s internal security was appropriate, the hospital was taking measures to ensure safety in the future.
http://cbs5.com/crime/childrens.hospital.hostage.2.1834045.html
Nurses seek tougher penalties as they treat more dangerous addicts, psychiatric patients
Amy Sancetta / AP
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Emergency room nurse Erin Riley suffered bruises, scratches and a chipped tooth last year from trying to pull the clamped jaws of a psychotic patient off the hand of a doctor at a suburban Cleveland hospital.
A second assault just months later was just as upsetting: She had just finished cutting the shirt off a drunken patient and was helping him into his hospital gown when he groped her.
“The patients always come first — and I don’t think anybody has a question about that — but I don’t think it has to be an either-or situation,” said Riley, a registered nurse for five years.
Violence against nurses and other medical professionals appears to be increasing around the country as the number of drug addicts, alcoholics and psychiatric patients showing up at emergency rooms climbs.
Nurses have responded, in part, by seeking tougher criminal penalties for assaults against health care workers.
“It’s come to the point where nurses are saying, ‘Enough is enough. The slapping, screaming and groping are not part of the job,’” said Joseph Bellino, president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, which represents professionals who manage security at hospitals.
Visits to ERs for drug- and alcohol-related incidents climbed from about 1.6 million in 2005 to nearly 2 million in 2008, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. From 2006 to 2008, the number of those visits resulting in violence jumped from 16,277 to 21,406, the agency said.
An Erie County Medical Center nurse was attacked and beaten on Wednesday by a psychiatric patient.
The victim was identified in Buffalo police reports as Kelly McCain, a registered nurse. She was in good condition at ECMC on Thursday, a hospital spokesman said.
Her alleged attacker, Terrence Caldwell, 22, of Theodore Street, was arrested and charged with second-degree assault, according to police.
Caldwell is accused of charging the nurses’ station and attacking McCain at about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday on the 11th floor, a psychiatric unit of the Grider Street hospital.
McCain was repeatedly punched in her head and face, and when she fell to the floor, Caldwell allegedly continued to kick her, police said. He’s then accused of choking McCain, and hitting her with a telephone receiver.
ECMC officials would not discuss details of the incident. But hospital officials said ECMC, as well as hospitals across the country, is dealing with a rise in aggressive behavior among mental health patients.
One of the reasons is that NYS Office of Mental Health (OMH) does not believe in providing a safe environment for staff to work.
Continued treatment for the mentally ill is a challenge, particularly as mental health care and programs are watered down, officials explained.
To deal with the more aggressive behavior, ECMC recently contracted with Horizon Health to manage its psychiatric program.
“It’s unfortunate that the events have happened, but the Erie County Medical Center was extremely proactive in starting a process to address the problem,” said Robert McCartney, vice president of behavioral health at ECMC and consultant with Horizon Health.
ECMC has added more security on the psychiatric floor, which is a locked unit and remains separate from the rest of the hospital, McCartney said. The hospital also is looking at creating another section for the more aggressive patients, McCartney said.
While the nurses’ station is not closed off from the patients, that change is being discussed. “We’re looking at everything,” McCartney said. “I can understand staff wish things would have changed yesterday, but changes don’t happen overnight.”
Tags: assault, buffalo, erie county medical center, NEW YORK, nurse, psychiatric hospital, unsafe, workplace violence
ANGOR, Maine (NEWS CENTER) — Acadia Hospital in Bangor is under investigation by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration and the Maine Department of Health and Human Services after an employee complained about workplace safety. OSHA started it’s investigation on July 26th, the licensing division of the Maine Department of Health and Human services plans to send a team to the Psychiatric hospital in the next few weeks.
“While OSHA is looking at workplace safety, our primary concern is patient safety,” said DHHS spokesman John Martins.
Shouldn’t workplace safety be equally as important as patient safety. Should a nurse, tech or direct care staff have to be fearful of injury?
OSHA would not discuss details about the complaint, but hospital officials say some employees have been injured in the past few months trying to restrain patients. An employee who spoke to NEWSCENTER on condition of anonymity blames the psychiatric hospitals recent policy change to eliminate the use of mechanical restraints. Employees are supposed to use only hand hold restraints, and to avoid even that at all costs.
Hospital officials on Tuesday defended that policy to move away from restraining patients, and say they believe the policy avoids more injures than it causes.
Translation: those who sit in the safety of their offices, and are not on the front lines with their own safety being threatened are creating policy. Let them first go on the front lines, and then let them make policy and then go back to the front lines and use the policy they enacted. Bet they’d change their tune when it’s their safety being threatened.
“Obviously, we’ve had some people get hurt,” said President and CEO David Proffit, “We are one hundred percent dedicated to have a injury free workplace, that no staff should come here and feel like they are going to get hurt or are subject to hurt or that they may be hurt.” we’re dedicated to this.
Proffit also added that he feels Acadia Hospital has the best front line staff of any psychiatric hospital in the northeast and believes most of the staff supports hospital policy. (Translation, those that call others for assistance when there is a crisis or behavior management issue like the policy. Those that are called for assistance whose safety is threatened do NOT like the policy.)
Tags: Arcadia hospital, MAINE, OSHA, psychiatric, workplace safety, workplace violence