Christine Hauser and Matthew Haag

<h1>A sixth-grade student in Lakeland, Florida, who had refused to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance throughout the school year was arrested this month after he had a dispute with a substitute teacher who confronted him about why he was not reciting it, police said.</h1>

The case against the boy, 11, who was arrested Feb. 4, has drawn outrage from the American Civil Liberties Union and his mother, who have criticized the misdemeanor charges against him as an overreaction by Polk County Public Schools and the middle school resource officer who arrested him. The boy told the teacher that he did not stand because he believes the pledge represents racism.

On Tuesday, Brian Haas, state attorney for the 10th Judicial Circuit in Florida, which handles cases in Lakeland, said his office would not prosecute the boy despite statements by police that he had made threats after disrupting class. “The case is closed,” Haas said.

However, earlier Tuesday, a lawyer for the boy’s family suggested that the case had not been resolved because the boy’s mother, Dhakira Talbot, declined an offer from prosecutors Monday to drop the case if the boy completed a so-called diversion program, which could include a fine and community service.

“We didn’t want to run the risk of laying the predicate that he agrees to their version of the facts,” the lawyer, Roderick O. Ford, said Tuesday before Haas had said the case was closed.

The boy’s family believes he was punished for expressing his First Amendment rights, Ford said. He said he planned to file a civil-rights complaint with the federal Department of Education this week.

“The young man engaged in protected activity when he refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, but then he engaged in protected speech when he stated his reasons,” he said. “We believe that the latter part is the major concern because he says the national anthem stood for discriminatory treatment of blacks. That was the real reason for the discrimination.”

The controversy at the school in Lakeland, about 30 miles east of Tampa, has raised questions about students’ freedom of expression and the willingness of schools to call the police on students, particularly those of color, for routine classroom disciplinary issues. The ACLU called the encounter “outrageous.”

The episode unfolded on the morning of Feb. 4 at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Polk County. The boy, who had refused to stand for the pledge the entire school year, had a substitute teacher that day who confronted him when he did not join his classmates.

“Why if it was so bad here he did not go to another place to live,” the teacher asked the boy, according to a statement issued by the teacher and obtained by Bay News 9, a news station in St. Petersburg, Florida.

According to the teacher, the boy, who is black, responded, “They brought me here.”

The teacher wrote that she replied, “Well you can always go back, because I came here from Cuba, and the day I feel I’m not welcome here anymore, I would find another place to live.”

She then called the school’s administrative offices “because I did not want to continue dealing with him,” according to her statement.

A school resource officer with the Lakeland Police Department eventually responded to the classroom and arrested the boy, who has not been identified publicly because of his age. A police spokesman declined to comment or release the affidavit, citing the boy’s juvenile status.

On Monday, Polk County Public Schools also said in a statement that the student was arrested after becoming disruptive and refusing to follow repeated instructions by members of the school staff and law enforcement. But the school district added that it did not “condone the substitute’s behavior” and had not asked for the boy to be arrested.

Polk County Public Schools said its student body code of conduct allows students not to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance if they have written authorization from a parent. The substitute teacher was not aware of that policy, the district said.

“I’m upset, I’m angry, I’m hurt — more so for my son,” Talbot told Bay News 9. “My son has never been through anything like this. I feel like this should’ve been handled differently.

“If any disciplinary action should’ve been taken, it should’ve been with the school. He shouldn’t have been arrested,” she said. Talbot, who did not return multiple messages seeking comment Monday and Tuesday, was no longer participating in interviews with the media, Ford said.

The case has drawn the attention of the ACLU, which has repeatedly criticized the “school-to-prison pipeline” in Florida, where thousands of students are arrested every year. Florida, unlike most other states, allows the police to arrest students of any age.

“Students do not lose their First Amendment rights when they enter the schoolhouse gates,” the ACLU said about the Lakeland case. “This is a prime example of the over-policing of black students in school.”

Across the country, black students are disciplined more often and face harsher consequences than their white peers. At Lawton Chiles Middle Academy, black students made up 17 percent of the student body last school year but represented 39 percent of disciplinary actions, according to data from the Florida Department of Education.

The Lakeland Police Department said in a statement Sunday that the boy was not arrested for refusing to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance but on charges of disrupting the classroom. The school resource officer and the dean of students “attempted to calm the student down” in the classroom, asking him to leave the room over 20 times, police said.

“The student left the classroom and created another disturbance and made threats while he was escorted to the office,” the police said. “This arrest was based on the student’s choice to disrupt the classroom, make threats and resisting the officer’s efforts to leave the classroom.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="bbf181ec-613e-4ae7-b231-4e1a96dd9b53" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/11-year-old-arrested.html">The New York Times</a>.

Florida student, 11, arrested after dispute over his refusal to say pledge of allegiance

The case against the boy, 11, who was arrested Feb. 4, has drawn outrage from the American Civil Liberties Union and his mother, who have criticized the misdemeanor charges against him as an overreaction by Polk County Public Schools and the middle school resource officer who arrested him.

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Pulse Kenya is the most followed news and entertainment platform in Kenya. It informs and engages young Kenyans around the clock and provides updates by the hour.

Christine Hauser and Matthew Haag

Articles written by the author

Florida student, 11, arrested after dispute over his refusal to say pledge of allegiance