Twelve-Year-Old Girl Arrested at Northeast Portland's Beaumont Middle School

On Wednesday, Portland police arrested the student for assault, 12 days after a fight at school.

Portland police arrested a 12-year-old-girl at Northeast Portland's Beaumont Middle School on Wednesday for dragging another student out of her chair by her hair.

During the conflict in class on March 18, the girl also hit a substitute teacher. The fight started as a verbal altercation and escalated, according to the Portland Police Bureau.

The victim reported the fight to the North Precinct on Wednesday, March 30. The girl was arrested and charged with assault in the fourth degree and harassment the same day, police say.

It's rare for a student as young as 12 to be arrested at school—and the circumstances of her arrest, nearly two weeks after the fight, have also drawn attention from observers of the school district.

Officers handcuffed the 12-year-old in the Beaumont Middle School office.

"After being handcuffed (which she verbally and physically resisted) she threw herself on the ground in the office, dragged her feet and eventually spit all over the inside of the police car," police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said in an email.

The officers also met with the girl's mother at the school.

The mom "became verbally abusive and unreasonable to the point that officers left," said Simpson.

Portland Public Schools officials did not immediately have a comment.

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