Specialized schools call the cops on kids with emotional disabilities. Critics say it’s proof they’re failing
Twice in the same week in May 2023, Oakland County Sheriff’s deputies restrained and put 10-year-old Caleb Killingsworth in the back of a patrol car.
The second time, Caleb, an autistic child who weighed less than 90 pounds and stood less than 5 feet tall, according to his mother, was restrained on the ground and then handcuffed. The fifth grader came away with scrapes on his face.
Both times school staff called law enforcement after Caleb walked away from the Pine Tree Center, a specialized school in Lake Orion with a program for “emotionally impaired” students, a state designation that applies to roughly 10,000 Michigan students with behavioral disabilities.
