Laura Booker Got On School Bus To Protect Daughter From Bullies

[Sister Iroz]

A Central Florida woman said she risked being arrested and shocked by a police officer's Taser gun in order to protect her daughter from bullies on the school bus.

Laura Booker told Local 6 News that her 13-year-old daughter was bullied by students and the bus driver. She said nobody would help stop the ongoing problem. On Thursday, Booker stepped onto her daughter's bus and confronted the bus driver, Sanford police said.

"There's nothing worse than knowing that something is happening to your child and the very people that are supposed to help are not helping," said Booker, who explained she ran out of options after she was not able to get help from Seminole County school administrators.

She said things never should have gotten this far.

"I'm coming to you, adult to adult, and you're treating me like this? How have you really been treating my 13-year-old daughter," said Booker.

In a report, police paint a very different picture of Booker. The arresting officer said Booker yelled at the driver and would not get off the bus even when threatened with a Taser gun. Police charged Booker with trespassing on school grounds and resisting an officer without violence.

Kaila Booker said students on the bus had been calling her names since August, and when she tried to get help from the bus driver, he blamed her. She said the bus driver even implied she was "ghetto."

"Anytime someone is picking on someone consistently to where the person is feeling targeted, they're feeling harassed, they're feeling frustrated, they're feeling they don't know what to do. To me, that's a form of bullying," said Booker. "When a grown man is bullying a 13-year-old child, it's time for a mother to step in if the people who should be stepping in don't step in."

[...]

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/27511669/detail.html

A Seminole County mother was arrested after she was caught on camera going onto a school bus to allegedly protect her daughter from bullies.

[...]

The bus driver and investigators released the video of the mother on Tuesday being taken down by police. The incident happened at Sanford Middle School; the bus driver called the principal for help, and even the principal couldn't calm the woman down.

Booker told police she was only trying to protect her daughter when the on-board camera captured her confronting a bus driver.

"Get off my bus," the bus driver told Booker in the video.

[...]

The video shows police arriving at the scene. The situation got so heated that an officer told Booker she would be tased if she did not get off the bus.

"She went about it the wrong way. She went to the school, didn't check in at the front office, which you're required to do, went to the school bus, [and] got on the school bus. Technically, at that point, she was trespassing," said Sgt. David Morganstern of the Sanford Police Department.

[...]

http://www.wftv.com/news/27518466/detail.html

[AngelFire]

I am all for protecting your kids, but this is stupid.

Someone please explain to me how getting confrontational with the bus driver in front of the same kids that bullying her child, is going to help the situation? I can see it now. Mom gets on bus, starts raising her voice when she doesn't get the answer she wants, bus driver hollers back, and the kids on the bus join the chaos. Yup, that is the way to go at it.....

[Tundratot]

Sounds to me like it was the other way around. She got on the bus to speak to him. The driver started in abusing her daughter, getting belligerent with her, and threatening her. She maintains her cool even as he continues to abuse her daughter to her. He is accusing her of all kinds of things that I just can't see or hear from that tape. He's the ass!

[midniteshadows]

My son's school has a zero tolerance policy against bullying. If a child is bullied, he/she is to tell the teacher who reports it to the princepal who in turn talks to the kid/s involved.

For 3 months, my son was bullied by a group of kids at school. For 3 months, I documented everything that happened to my son, who was involved, what happened, which teacher was notified, if anything was done et all.

The final straw was when my son came home and told me that he had been spit on, bitten and hit by these group of kids.

That night, I wrote a letter with copies to the superintendent, the principal, teachers involved and the secretary.

The next morning, letters and documents in hand, I basically told everyone involved:

"For the past 3 months, my son has been bullied by a group of students. My son has followed the school's policy in reporting the abuse, which has only escalated the bullying. You have FAILED to protect my son.

If this behavior doesn't stop immediately, I will hire an attorney and sue the school for failure to protect my child. I will then sue each and everyone of you for failure to do the same. I will go to the newspapers and report my story. I will inform the school board and the state education agency about the failure in protecting my son from bullies. I will also press abuse and failure to proctect charges against everyone involved including the parents and their kids.

So, you have a choice. Stops this now or I will stop it."

The bullying stopped that day and hasn't recurred. That was 5 years ago. There is a lot less bullying going on in the school. When it's discovered, it's stopped and not allowed to continue on for 3 months like it did with my son.

So, sometimes, confrontation is not always the way to go. Our basic instinct when someone hurts our child/ren is to strike back. What we as parents need to learn is to put aside our emotions and determine with a level head what is the best course of action for our child/ren all the while mindful that our child/ren will learn from our actions.

[DamagedGoods]

I absolutely agree with Tundra! She seemed quite calm and rational to me, whereas the bus driver starts right off telling her that her child is a liar, and with an annoying belligerent attitude, and that's pretty much all he keeps saying. Hell, I want to hit him...

[scrappy]

I haven't seen the video, so I'll take your perspective of it as accurate. Midnite shadows has the right approach though, if your kid (and you) can take three months of bullying before you start to threaten legal action.

You've just gotta follow the stated policies in place first, tread carefully, because bureacracies trying to cover their asses are oh so cagey about putting you in the wrong, even when you have a valid complaint. (Believe me, I work for one!) Documentation is critical, and keeping a cool head when addressing the wrongs.

Then, when you get no satisfaction you go straight to high profile legal action. Perfectly executed ms!

The problem with the mom in this story is she ended up hurting herself and maybe humiliating the poor kid further. Sucks. In our local school corp a couple of parents and an older sibling showed up at school to protect their middle-school aged kid from some bullies and ended up arrested. I knew the kid who cried bullying and it was completely believable to me that it was true. Parents claimed they'd already tried the other route but had no gotten no remedy. Imagine how embarrassing for the kid to have her family's arrests on the front page of the paper.

[princessgrandma]

OK, maybe she did handle it wrong, maybe not, but the kid had been bullied for months with nothing being done about it.

I'm not too sure I wouldn't have done the same or more if it had been my kid. I'm like a mama tiger when it comes to one of my kids or grands.

I hope the bullying stopped for this little girl.

[AngelFire]

Don't get me wrong, I don't condone bullying, I teach my kids to stand up against it. But really, what was she going to accomplish by getting on the bus? Bus driver doesn't give a rat's ass about the kids, it's a job to them and nothing more. You go and make noise where someone with authority can actually do something.

[Silvahalo]

I'm wouldn't put up with my child being bullied. This child was feeling so helpless as the bus driver himself played into the bullying. I know I would have done what this mom did in a heart beat, but that's me. I have to keep my head cool too, as when my kids are being threatened alarms go off. It appears this mother was left feeling pretty desperate too with the problem not getting resolved.

I was bullied bad as a kid. I was small for my age looked far younger than my years, it was no fun. On the bus I had problems with this big heathen of a bitch. She bullied the hell outta me and others cheered her on. My parents did NOTHING as I complained about it. One day I got in a fight with this bully on the bus and I tell you I felt pretty damn scared and helpless, it was cat fight and all but still, the Ox of a girl was far larger than I. I learned fast how to deal with those bigger than I who had a mean fuckn streak. She later got a punch square from me that left her more stunned than hurt. I got expelled for awhile but she never bothered me again. NOT saying that one should resort to violence, but some bullies...well, they have it coming when reasoning don't work.

I applaud this mother for doing something, showing her daughter this shit is unacceptable. And I think she handled things fine from what I read, I'm sure we are not getting the full picture either...bet on that. You know, we could be reading on this child having tried to commit suicide or something and then we'd ask wtf did the parents do?
yeah, I'd like to shake this woman's hand...really, I would have been so proud had my mom even done a fraction of this to help me. Good going Ms. Booker.

[princessgrandma]

I think bullies should get exactly what they put out. There is no way I am going to know that my child is being bullied and not do anything about it. If this was going on for months, this mother was probably doing the first thing she thought of to put an end to it, especially when most of what was happening was happening on the bus, and the harassment and abuse was actually coming from the driver too.

I don't care who it is, it was his job to see those kids safely to school and home. I believe that encompasses them being safe from bullies on those trips. He doesn't have to LOVE the kids to do his job, he just needs to DO his job. Instead, he was a bully himself and was part of the problem.

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Last week:

After more than nine hours of jury deliberations, a Seminole County judge this evening declared a mistrial in the case of a Sanford mother arrested for climbing aboard her daughter's school bus and refusing to get off because the driver wouldn't listen to her complaints about bullying.

Laura Booker, 40, is charged with trespassing and resisting arrest. She faces a possible sentence of one year in the Seminole County Jail.
[...]

Booker insists she did nothing wrong. She left the courtroom with a worried look on her face.

"It's not over," she said.

But a few minutes later, walking down the hallway, she was defiant. She had a right to be on that bus that day, she said, and is grateful that jurors realized bullying is a problem.

A video made by a bus security camera shows what happened that day, April 7, at Sanford Middle School.

Booker calmly begins talking to the driver, Roy Hooks, after all the students have exited.

He angrily cuts her off.

"Get off the bus now," he says. "Your daughter is a big liar."

Booker told jurors Wednesday that she had complained for months that her daughter, an eighth grader at Sanford Middle School, was being bullied on the bus. She blamed the driver for allowing it to happen and for picking on her child.

The video shows that during the 15-minute confrontation, several people – the driver, a school official and several Sanford police officers – repeatedly asked Booker to get off the bus.

They ordered her off at least 25 times, said Assistant State Attorney Lisa Haba.

Booker finally stepped down after one officer pushed her from behind and another threatened to shoot her with a Taser.

Five officers then took her to the ground and handcuffed her.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,5462613.story

The chief prosecutor in Seminole County today said his office will retry Laura Booker, the Sanford mom arrested after she stepped onto a school bus and refused to get off because the driver would not talk to her about bullying problems.
[...]

Today, Pat Whitaker, chief of operations for the State Attorney's Office in Seminole, said his office has no interest in sending Booker to jail, but she broke the law, he said, and public officials need to protect children on school busses.

"That school bus is a pretty sacred place," he said.

Booker's new trial is to start Nov. 3.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,5771903.story

Even if I was that angry, I still think I would take my lumps and deal with the consequences of my actions. I could probably figure out what was coming (especially after being asked to leave 25 times). It sounds like the DA would work out a reasonable plea and I could still get my point across.