The thing that really irks me about this mother is the utter lack of responsibility. "Oh it's not my kid's fault, or mine, it's the school system's"
Really? So if the kid was raised by you for the first 5 years of his life, and the behavioral foundation was set by your standard, then what do you expect him to be like outside of the home? Even if he does have "a little extra trouble" keeping his temper, it doesn't mean he is completely free of responsibility when he decides to have a freak-out.
My brother has a behavioral problem, and whenever he has "outbursts" (not even close to the violence this kid shows), my mother and father always take responsibility, and try to teach a proactive approach to my brother and try to find a solution (like counting to ten and breathing before reacting), and finding things that raised his irritability level, and then taking them away or reducing them. One of the things we found that increased his tendency to misbehave was violent video games. Maybe the mother could try not giving the kid the Xbox for a couple weeks, that game in the news clip looked pretty violent..........probably makes him a little jumpy too.
As for the cops.... did you see the size of that kid? When I opened the thread I thought "well, sounds justified, but the kid still couldn't really pack a punch unless he fashioned a sword from the yardstick." Well, that kid was huge for an eight year old....
if he had a stick or a bat there could have been some serious damage done.
Cops justified. Mother, smarten up. Please. And give your kid some breathing exercises, and maybe some yoga.