It was a March afternoon in Rutherford County, Tennessee, a growing community about 30 miles southeast of Nashville.

School was out for the day and a dozen or so little kids. We're playing a game of pickup basketball in someone's backyard.

And then, as kids do, one said something about another kid's mom.

This insult led to some shoving and then

as kids also do, one of them pulled out a cell phone and started filming. There's

some kind of heavy neon filter over the whole video so it's hard to make out any faces

But here's what you can see

An eight-year-old boy hands shoved into the pockets of his oversized parka,

he's trying to walk away from everyone

when a smaller boy, about five or six,

runs up behind him and smacks him in the back a few times.

Then another little kid runs up and takes his turn, throws a couple

feeble punches to the back of the kid walking away. Some of the older boys are

dragging them on.

Get up, say, say, say, swim! boys are dragging them on. Meantime, off camera, you can hear one girl try to break it up.

Other kids just stand around watching, and a few of them are also filming on their phones.

And then the video just ends.

It's the type of fight that barely seems worth posting online, but that happened anyway, and soon the video started to make the rounds, spreading from the kids to teachers, and eventually to one police officer.

And it's what happened next once this officer got involved,

that the story really begins,

because it's what caught everyone's attention

to what's been happening to kids in Rutherford County.

...