ILLINOIS — A Illinois police department is standing behind its decision to arrest an 8-year-old special needs student.<\/p>\n
The girl was handcuffed at her Alton school on last Tuesday. Her guardian says he\u2019s outraged his daughter was treated like a criminal.<\/p>\n
Jmiyha Rickman<\/strong> was hauled off in the back of a police car from school to the Alton Police Department and was held for nearly two hours.<\/p>\n Police say they had no choice after Rickman<\/strong> took a swing at a school resource officer and tore up two classrooms.<\/p>\n Her guardian says the situation could have been handled better.<\/p>\n \u201cI trusted the school to give her the adequate treatment and care she deserves and they failed us,\u201d said Nehemiah Keeton<\/strong>, Rickman\u2019s<\/strong> uncle and guardian.<\/p>\n Keeton<\/strong> says Rickman<\/strong> is autistic and suffers from separation anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n On Tuesday morning, he got a phone call from Love Joy Elementary School in Alton to pick her up because she was having a tantrum.\u00a0 He says this has happened several times before.<\/p>\n Keeton<\/strong> was on his way to the school when he got a phone call from police saying Rickman<\/strong> was in custody.<\/p>\n Rickman<\/strong> says her hands and feet were handcuffed and had a belt around her waist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ILLINOIS — A Illinois police department is standing behind its decision to arrest an 8-year-old special needs student. The girl was handcuffed at her Alton school on last Tuesday. Her guardian says he\u2019s outraged his daughter was treated like a criminal. Jmiyha Rickman was hauled off in the back of a police car from school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}