Police Now Happy to Supervise Spankings to Make Sure They're Legal

It’s not well-advertised, but if a parent wants to disciple their child in Florida (at least Okeechobee but probably all over) with a spanking, they can have a police officer come and watch to make sure that it’s on the up-and-up and no one’s doing anything illegal.

Never mind the fact that spanking doesn’t work and that physical punishment may leave psychological scars, it’s probably not unsafe to say that being hit in the presence of a police officer may cause a few issues that the child may need to discuss with a therapist when they’re older. Or now. It’s always a good time to talk about feelings.

Why is this in the news? Well, a man who was upset that his daughter got into an argument with her sister earlier this week couldn’t find any other way to get the girl to learn what she’d done was wrong without raising a hand to her. But he also didn’t want to go to jail, so he called up a deputy who came over, watched the whole thing, determined it was all good and peaced on out to do some more policing. My thought on this is that if you’re even worried that something you might do to your child could warrant legal action against you, you probably shouldn’t do it. You don’t have to call a police officer to supervise a timeout or any other myriad of punishments you can dole out without getting physical, so maybe let the idea that it’s cool to spank go. And just because it worked on a previous generation doesn’t mean it’s okay to do now. You know what else we thought was cool to give to kids in previous generations? Heroin. For teething.

The Sheriff has confirmed that officers do, in fact, watch spankings on slow days:

“It happens,” Stephen said. “It’s definitely not something we advertise to do, and even though law enforcement has been willing to help out in this situation, watching a parent discipline their child is something that’s done only when a deputy has no other calls to handle.”

Maybe those officers could bring a pamphlet about other ways to discipline your child instead? I am 100% against spanking (due to my own experience) and can’t even think how much harder it would be for a kid to have another adult, especially one that is taught to be someone who will save you if you’re in trouble, watch it go down.