Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

The nation is up in arms about the five year old girl who was handcuffed (see the video) recently by police in St. Petersburg. Many are faulting the teachers and school for getting the cops involved. Even the St. Pete police chief said they should not have been called.

Any outrage should be directed at the young girl’s parents. Here are a few tips:

#1 Your children need to be taught to respect authority. This doesn’t mean only teachers, but especially teachers. Teachers shouldn’t have to come home bruised.
#2 If your child throws a tantrum for thirty minutes, it is not a tantrum, and it is not normal. If your children exhibit this behavior, there is a problem.
#3 If your fastest emergency contact cannot make it for over 2 hours, expect someone else to make decisions and take action.

The school system is not a babysitter. The institution exists to give an education. That is their main job. The educators in this case did everything reasonable to avoid the outcome. Without physically assaulting or threatening the child it seemed as if there would be no end to the inappropriate behavior. How long should one or two administrators be tied up watching one single five year old? I think an hour is plenty.

Parents have got to take responsibility. Black Americaweb’s Tonyaa Weathersbee has it right: “the adults in charge, because they aren’t allowed to touch students or talk too tough to them, were literally reduced to begging this child to stop.”

So who are these parents? The father is a worthless criminal and has not been interviewed. The mother is 24 year old Inga Akins. She is not interested in raising her child properly. She’s not even interested in justice. She’s now driven by fame and money. She fired her lawyer because he released the video to media outlets and she had given “A Current Affair” exclusive rights to the video, and they were upset he released it to other media outlets. The mom and daughter (no word of a father) are now going to move out of state.

Here’s the shame of it all. A young woman of only 24 years has three kids from two dads, and neither pay child support. Makes you wonder how she got into this situation in the first place. Maybe if she had better parents…