- Police Brutality Watch

Parents and child advocates were angered that Miami-Dade police used a stun gun to control a first-grader. The 6-year-old boy Miami-Dade police immobilized with a 50,000-volt stun gun stands about three-feet, five inches tall and maybe weighs 55 pounds. The boy, named after an Old Testament prophet, suffers from attention deficit order and takes a pill each morning to calm himself, his mother said. On Friday -- a day after the incident at Kelsey Pharr Elementary School became public -- the little boy sat quietly in his mother's lap, wrapped in a Mickey Mouse comforter. ''I never want to go back to school,'' he said. Then the first-grader tore out of his great-grandmother's second-floor apartment, scaled the steps, tussled with the dog, ran around the yard and rode his bike. ''He is a natural, normal kid. He rides his bike. He gets into it with other children. He throws water balloons, like any other child,'' said his mother, Kathy Rojas. ``The police could have handled this better. They did not have to shoot him. My child is not mentally ill. He is hyperactive. They could have tried to handle the situation with anything, with candy, toys, ice cream, anything.'' Miami-Dade police on Friday insisted they did the right thing because the officers did not have to physically manhandle a child who, they say, was armed with a shard of glass and threatening to cut himself. Still, the incident at the Brownsville school made national news and exposed the department to more criticism for its use of Tasers, which it has begun distributing in greater numbers to officers. [more]