Pepper time?

Thank God for pepper spray.

That’s the extremely irritating, temporarily blinding and disabling chemical that Lakewood police sprayed in the face of an eight-year-old boy who was acting up in his second-grade class in late February.

According to news reports, the kid named Aiden was throwing a temper tantrum and threatening teachers with a one-foot-long piece of wood trim he’d somehow pulled off the classroom wall before police arrived.

When the boy refused to drop the scary piece of trim, officers sprayed him — twice — until he dropped the wood, then handcuffed him.

That’s right – pepper-sprayed and handcuffed an eight-year-old, four-foot-tall, eighty-pound child.

Aiden’s mom called the media to complain about how police and school officials handled the situation, suggesting they acted excessively.

But both school and police officials defended the officers for their brave actions in the face of such demonic behavior. After all, the child had threatened teachers who had run away and barricaded themselves in their classrooms.

Police spokesman Steve Davis was quoted as saying the officers responded in the best possible manner.

“You’ve got teachers barricading themselves in a room. They are obviously frightened,´ said Davis. “I think they not only made the right choice, they made a great choice that day to use the pepper spray.”

Great choice? OK, let’s step back for a moment and examine this scene: Police arrive at the school and are confronted with a small child wielding a small stick. Obviously an extremely dangerous situation. I wonder – if the pepper spray didn’t work – if they were prepared to pull their guns and shoot the kid so he wouldn’t attack them.

Admittedly, this is not good behavior on the kid’s part. But whatever happened to common sense and calmly talking to the child, or even just walking over and taking the stick away? I’m pretty sure eight-year-olds can easily be overpowered by a couple of adult officers.

One child behavioral expert asked to weigh in on the situation blamed it on TV and video games and called it a “wakeup call” for schools and parents, warning that more such frighteningly violent episodes are coming to plague our schools.

We later learned from Aiden’s grandpa that the kid hasn’t had a father figure in his life because his dad is in the military in Afghanistan. And he also revealed the child experienced a painful, undisclosed “trauma” when he was about six years old.

So Mr. Instant Expert may have been a little off base when he immediately latched onto video games as the root of the child’s problems.

For me, this incident just points to an extreme lack of common sense on the part of the police, who apparently need some training in this area. I wonder if the person who sprayed him in the face has a child of his/her own?

And why did the teachers behave in such a cravenly way? Didn’t even one of them have any experience dealing with a fit-throwing eight-year-old?

Makes me wonder what happened to compassion for a little boy who was obviously hurting inside that day.

And found none.

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