Her son, she was told, was repeatedly disrespectful at school, and so one Columbus, Ga., mother decided that she would take matters into her own hands. She called the police to “arrest” her son to teach him a lesson, the Ledger-Enquirer reports.
Chiquita Hill documented the “arrest” on Facebook, posting openly about the unconventional discipline.
“First let me say that I love my children,” Hill wrote in her post on Tuesday under the name Jada Powell. “They are what keeps me going. But … I’ll be damned if they are disrespectful to me and anyone else. I’ve been getting reports that [the child] has been stupidly disrespectful to his teacher. So bad to a point she came to my home today. That was it for me, the last straw. My children will not be thugs and wannabes. … What I did next was scared straight, Columbus Ga style … ”
According to the Ledger-Enquirer, the 33-year-old is a single mother of three children: her son, who is 10, and two daughters, 9 years old and 5 months.
Hill told the news site that her son’s teacher called her at home on Tuesday and asked to come to the house to speak about her son and his behavior. “[The teacher] came by on her personal time,” Hill said. “[My son] was not expecting … her to be here.”
But the child remained stubborn, refusing to listen to the teacher. When Hill asked him about his actions, he reportedly said, “Because I wanted to, and I don’t care.”
That, the mother said, was the last straw. The child reportedly did not believe that his mother would call the police on him, but call the authorities she did. Hill said she kept the windows closed so the child would not be able to see the approaching officers.
“They put him in handcuffs and were loud and he didn’t have time to react,” Hill recalled. “They put him in the car and let him sit and think about it. At that time, they called my daughter out and talked to her. They explained to her why her brother was in trouble and sent her back inside. Then they went back to the car and one of the officers got in and flashed the lights and started driving just a few inches.
“Clearly he was hurt,” she added. “It hurt me. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to get across to him.”
When he was finally let out of the patrol car, he reportedly ran to his mother and gave her “the biggest hug” before going to comfort his sister.
“I was trying to get a point across to my son, if you want to be disrespectful and you want to be rude, this is what happens when bad people do bad things,” Hill said, defending her methods of discipline, knowing that there are people who would not agree with her. “There are consequences for everything.”
Hill pointed to the story of hailed “mom of the year” Toya Graham, who was seen hitting her teenage son on TV to get him away from the riots occurring in Baltimore. Hill said that she didn’t want to wait until a situation like that to try to get through to her son.
“I don’t want to snatch my son out of the middle of the street,” Hill said. “I’m trying to curb it now so it won’t be like that. I understand what she’s going through because that’s her only son. That’s a passionate mother right there. She loves her child. She loves her children. Me too. I’ll do anything I can to protect them. And if I have to take a drastic measure like this to make sure he stays out of that, I’ll do it.”
Read more at the Ledger-Enquirer.