Many of you have already watched the videos of a South Carolina high school resource officer knocking a female student out of her chair and dragging her across the classroom. From what we know, the student was texting on her cell phone and refused to stop when the teacher told her to, then refused the teacher’s order to leave the room. The vice principal was called in, and the resource officer either came with him or followed soon after. The girl didn’t move from her desk or appear to be a physical threat to anyone when she was slammed to the ground. She was arrested, along with another student who stood up and loudly protested the officer’s actions from across the room.
Unless there was some kind of physical threat we don’t know about, the officer’s actions were totally unacceptable. Most people agree, including the mayor as well as representatives of the school district and the police force. But one part of the story hasn’t been addressed adequately, and it demands more attention. The officer was called into the room to act as a “bouncer,” probably by the vice principal, and he and the teacher stood by and watched as the officer assaulted the girl.
Blame the officer, absolutely. Fire him, absolutely. Then take a very close look at the teacher, the vice principal and the disciplinary culture of the school. The moment captured on tape and the arrests that followed are classic examples of the criminalization of our schools. A relatively minor disciplinary offense—a student disobeying an order from her teacher—escalated into a violent confrontation with a police officer and an encounter with the criminal justice system. Two students were unnecessarily thrown into the school-to-prison pipeline. And while the officer was wildly out of line, I put the primary blame on the vice principal and possibly (though not necessarily) the teacher. It was their school. They had a responsibility to protect their students from harm whenever possible, and they failed to do so.
The officer should not have been brought into the classroom. At most—at the very most—the vice principal should have stationed the officer outside the classroom in case the incident in the room turned violent. The girl’s misbehavior, her refusal to obey a teacher’s order, was a garden variety school incident, and it should have been taken care of using the school’s disciplinary procedures. Things might have gotten messy—it’s possible they could have escalated to violence—but the job of the teacher and administrator was to do everything they could to de-escalate the situation. Instead, they let a cop take over as they stood back and watched. The situation was allowed to go from a case of schoolroom misbehavior into one of those traffic stops turned bad we’ve watched on too many recent videos.
Add the cop’s behavior to the too-long list of incidents of police overreacting to a situation. But also realize that the school’s encouragement of police action in a situation that called for in-house disciplinary procedures belongs in a less publicized but growing list of school incidents where students are treated like potential criminals. Every school with its own resource officer should view this as a cautionary tale. The officer has to be carefully vetted, then trained to use violence and arrest only as a last resort, and the school’s staff has to be vigilant against using police action and criminal procedure as a substitute for reasonable disciplinary action.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2015.
So your solution is to blame everyone EXCEPT the student that refuses to follow rules? And then even piling on with the assumption of other officers over reacting? “Too long list?” How did you compile that?
I pray you are never on a jury if I were on trial.
This is what is left of our public schools.
The sheriff said the girl would not use her Chrome Book. That alone was not disruptive. She also had her phone out and would not put it away. From the events we saw, it is just as possible that the student was taping the teacher’s conduct. Why should that matter? Because the sheriff appreciated that the other three students had their phones out and recorded the deputy. Note that the sheriff said that the girl punched the deputy. However, watch it frame by frame. It appears that when the officer grabbed her to throw her backwards while still in her chair/desk, he leveraged that take down across her “chest.” Only as she begun to move back did her right arm go up, the arm closest to the hand using the leverage. The girl may have been wrong. However, unless an exception is that a teacher can do what ever he wants, the law goes both ways. A disruptive teacher can be criminally charged. What was interesting was that the teacher and assistant principal both said that the force was not excessive. So, that force was common or at least not out of the ordinary to them. That was the most interesting aspect of the entire event.
Not gonna learn much if you’re texting instead of listening. All cell phones and other electronic devices should be checked at the door. School children survived without them until the end of the 20th century. They should be able to now.
So deal with texting by taking points off her grade. End of story. That’s how we deal with problems in the grown up world.
Good article. It was absolutely a failure at all levels. I remember passing notes in class. I don’t remember being slammed to the ground for doing so.
This is a bad case. The girl, we are told, was disrupting the class by failing to follow instructions from the teacher. We don’t know if she was verbally disrupting (in any number of possible ways) or just not responding to verbal instructions. Folks, this IS a problem, and with teenagers, cannot just be ignored. But in not ignoring, there is the flaw. The other students are watching and forming alternative actions for their own behavior, not all of which may be positive. She had been told to leave the room repeatedly and would not leave. Someone had to get her out of there, somehow.
In elementary school, when a 2nd grader refused to come out from under the table, the principal was called, and when the child still refused to accept authority, the principal asked the teacher to remove the rest of the class for an unplanned recess break while the situation was resolved. Then the child was physically carried down to the office where the parent was called.
Can’t be done in high school. The class is completely disrupted. Parent needed to be contacted immediately. If no phone in classroom, then office needed to do this. No matter what the school did the student had succeeded in ending the lesson and the education of the other students. Ignoring her behavior (again, we don’t know what the precipitating behavior actually was, but I’m guessing it was not appropriate) sounds easy but when you are not in the moment, you don’t know.
In any case, the cop was dead wrong in using physical force of the nature we saw. Get the cop out. I’d like to see actual practical solutions offered that would deal with the realities of the situation, not high flying philosophical premises.
You can take all the points off her grade that you want but you have not accepted responsibility for the lack of respect that is being shown for educators. And yet you push for FREE college. I don’t know if this young lady actually had any tuition at risk, but would making it free cause her to act any better?
PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS,PARENTS, This is all on the “Parents”. In america today we have Parents who teach their children nothing about personal responsibility, nothing about following the rules, and worse yet nothing about following and abiding by our laws. You want to cast blame as the Tucson weekly always does against anyone related to law enforcement go right ahead. This Girl’s behavior is what started this incident. Yes maybe the officer over reacted, but he overreacted at the frustration of the Teacher, and the Principal not being able to control the situation. It all comes back to Parenting something the Weekly knows nothing about.
The officer should never have put his hands on the child but simply moved the child in the chair out of the room. That’s what I do! And you wonder why the US academic scores are falling. It’s the degree of intelligence. You would never see that behavior in an AP class!
Send the OTHER message. You don’t have to listen to the teacher, or the Vice Principal or the police.
You remove trouble and destruction from the room so the TEACHER can TEACH the students who want to learn. She should have a Special ED evaluation!
Third Video shows the girl punched officer!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgH5R07MWv…