From the moment the resource officer was involved, it was an arrest. When a sophomore girl in a South Carolina high school refused to stop using her cell phone, then refused to leave the room as her teacher ordered, the school resource officer arrested her. As part of the arrest, he slammed her to the ground while she was still sitting in her desk. He also arrested another girl who stood up in outrage and shouted at the officer because of what he was doing. The charge for both girls: Disturbing schools.
Both she and another student who verbally challenged the officer’s actions during the arrest still face misdemeanor charges of disturbing schools, punishable by up to a $1,000 fine or 90 days in jail, Lott said, although in most cases, judges impose alternative sentences that keep students out of jail.
Until I read about this incident, I had no idea how many hardened criminals I had in my classes during my thirty-plus years as a public high school teacher. I always thought when students disturbed the school or disturbed my classroom, they were behavior problems. Times have changed. School discipline issues, even with no violence of threat of violence involved, can now be cause for arrest, fines and possible jail time. Mouth off in class, refuse to obey a teacher’s order to put away your cell phone, and you may take a ride on the school-to-prison pipeline.
Let’s assign some blame here. At the very top of the list is the culture of criminalizing student behavior. But let’s look at the individuals first.
The student was certainly to blame for texting on her cell phone during class, then refusing to put it away or give it to the teacher, then refusing to leave the classroom. What punishment did she deserve? That depends on particulars of the situation and her past history with the teacher and the school. It sounds like a situation that calls for a talk with her teacher or counselor or the vice principal or all of them, followed by something ranging from a warning of punishment if it ever happens again to a suspension. Arrest? Out of the question.
The teacher may deserve blame if he’s not good at handling classroom situations and he let a situation he should have been able to take care of get out of hand. But if he was right to make those demands of the student and there was no reasonable way for him to get her to follow instructions, it made sense to call in the vice principal.
The vice principal was certainly to blame for calling in the resource officer, which is what led to the assault on the girl and the arrest. Later, the sheriff said this about the incident:
“They need to understand that when they call us, we’re going to take a law enforcement action,” [Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott] said. “Maybe that ought to have been something handled by the school without ever calling the deputy.”
The sheriff is right. The vice principal ceded his authority to the resource officer and turned a disciplinary situation into a police action. In the days before school resource officers, an incident like this would have been part of a day’s work for the administrator in charge of discipline. The vice principal would have figured out a way to deal with it. If the student wasn’t violent and didn’t threaten violence, that’s what he should have done in this situation.
The resource officer is certainly to blame for the use of excessive force. The girl’s disobedience didn’t warrant that level of physical reaction. But interestingly, he would have been following proper police procedure if he grabbed hold and kept hold of her until he could restrain her. His mistake as a police officer, according to the Sheriff Lott, was letting go of her, throwing her to the floor. When the vice principal turned the situation over to the officer, the officer was granted permission to use the same kind of force he might use during a traffic stop or an arrest on the street.
As I said earlier, the culture of criminalizing student behavior deserves the greatest blame. In a sense, the teacher, vice principal and resource officers were actors playing their proper roles in a “zero tolerance” school play. That’s where the problem lies, and that’s the danger of assigning resource officers to schools as standard operating procedure. Unless the school staff and the officer are clear that the purpose of the police presence is to keep the school safe and provide a resource for the students, unless everyone understands that police actions and arrests are a last resort, something to be used only when a situation is beyond the staff’s ability to handle, these kinds of situations, which have become all too prevalent, will continue to be a part of our students’ school day.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2015.
“The sheriff is right. The vice principal ceded his authority to the resource officer and turned a disciplinary situation into a police action.”
Resisting arrest has led to many fatalities. It’s a shame, but there is a procedure to remain unharmed. Follow it.
In order to charge someone with “resisting arrest,” there has to be a valid reason for a police officer to attempt an arrest in the first place. A slightly disobedient teenager refusing to put away her cell phone does not, ever, warrant an arrest or being thrown across the room. (If a parent had treated their own kid in public this way, we’d be calling CPS.) The comply-or-die mentality of people who think that this is an acceptable way to treat our nation’s children is deeply disturbing to me. There is absolutely NOTHING she did that makes this violence acceptable. I’m glad he’s fired; now charge him with assault.
WE ARE LUCKY HE DIDN’T SHOOT HER IN TODAYS POLICE CLIMATE.
“Some studies indicate that school resource officers make criminal arrests of student for matters that should be handled through the school disciplinary channels and should not have escalated to the level of criminal charges being filed in Juvenile Court.” wikipedia
So we have armed SROs in the schools to do the teachers and administrators job. And then we have unarmed soldiers at Ft Hood, KILLED, that are not allowed to carry firearms?
Are you a member of the political party that thought this stupidity up? Shame on all of you.
Now that you all think you’re experts on this situation from the video you were shown…we find out that another student has turned in his video of the girl striking the officer.
Do you feel lied to?
There are 3 videos of this incident, and in none of them is she hitting the cop, who is known to the students as Officer Slam, which should tell you a lot. As her desk is being overturned and she is being thrown to the floor, her arms flail around, as I imagine your arms would flail if you were brutally tossed around by a man at least twice your size. And — I can’t stress this enough — even if her small fist did contact this weightlifter’s body, there is still NO reason for him to have treated her this way. He is an adult, in authority, who should have more self-control. His badge creates a HIGHER standard for him, not a lower one.
The Sheriff just announced that he has a new video that has not been released. Slow down you manipulated reactionaries. You could not have seen this one.
yes Rat t, i feel lied to, though perhaps not in the way you are insinuating
Anybody who has been in a classroom within the last 10 years understands the frustration felt from the teacher, VP, and resource officer. The resource officer did go too far and he probably should have just dragged the chair with her in it out of the classroom, but I do understand. On any given school day a teacher faces emotional, psychological, and physical abuse from teenagers and small children as well; who run the school because their deadbeat parents expect teachers to parent their children among other things. Teachers do not have the backing of administration so it is not a classroom management issue; it is the case of collecting money for every kid in a seat and the fact that deadbeat parents are the first ones to sue. There are not any consequences for students who disrupt the learning process of other students and they are rude, disrespectful, and probably can’t read nor write at grade level due to social promotion; which was the worst social experiment forced upon education. Teachers take more crap from other people’s children that they would never take from their own children because they have to. This is why there is going to be a massive teacher shortage because of the lack of pay and all the paperwork that needs to be collected, sorted, entered into a databank for analysis. The constant teaching to the test and working past contract hours without the extra pay. Most teachers leave after 5 years because teachers are not teaching; they are babysitting and are data entry people. Until administrators take a stand and enforce a policy in which disruptive and non-compliant students are sent home everyday for their parents to deal with so that they learn and appreciate the fact that public education is a gift and that students cannot disrupt the learning process of the others in the classroom. If it means that the district lose money at first because a child is not in school; but in the long run parents will get tired of their kids getting sent home and see how fast their children change their tune. Most people would not last one day in a classroom today. Charter schools do not take the special needs, the unruly, and the learning disabled so they shouldn’t take public money. Public schools have to take everybody and all of their issues. That teenager is not innocent in all of this, but yet she will get a windfall from the taxpayers. Mainstreaming is another debacle gone wrong because of lack of funding, staff, and support. That teenage girl probably wouldn’t have been in that class except for mainstreaming. It is criminal that a teacher is forced to teach to an overcrowded class without an aide and to students with different learning levels who just bring the class down instead of lifting it up. Every student deserves an education, but at their own level. We all don’t have the same brains and we all learn differently so why cram everybody into an overcrowded classroom and make demands on teachers who possibly cannot make miracles?????
Some of the comments on this page are scary in the lack of compassion they show. Really, people? Arrested for being a (non-violent) disturbance in school? How is THAT for a waste of police power and since when is that an arrestable offense? Does South Carolina have private prisons looking for inmates?
I completely agree with Safier that the criminalization of students is the problem here. But its not the only problem, as he states. My question in the incident was Where are the counselors? Where are the people in the education system to handle this situation? Why do we accept this scarcity of qualified personnel in our schools and instead accept high school graduates with guns who are trained to use them? The school to prison pipeline is not only about the criminalization of youth–it is also about increasing poverty and vertiginously decreasing attention to our public schools. Huge class sizes, a lack of trained and qualified adults in our schools all add to the mix. Instead of highlighting these things, too many commentators simply accept that the way our public schools are now is alright. IT IS NOT ALRIGHT! These are our kids! As a society we should be investing in them as if they were the future–because they are.
And speaking of our kids, I don’t think that my kid would ever be treated that way. His Mexican/American heritage doesn’t show, so for all the world he looks like a white kid. I frankly don’t think such physical restraint would be considered acceptable or within the bounds of appropriate school behavior for not giving up his cell phone. And for those who question that, I wonder what you all would be saying if the policeman were black and the student were white—such transgressions of societal expectations were cause for lynching and hanging at one time in South Carolina.
In the days before “resource officers” we got swats. We where grabbed by the arm hauled to the principals office and swatted and we feared that. This little criminal did not. She got and the DA student that stood in protest what they deserved. That deputy should have been supported by his sheriff but he took the bait from the media and fired him. We will stop criminalizing students when they stop acting like criminals.
She elbowed him near his groin. Game Over.
Personally, he should have just grabbed the backseat of the chair and pulled her into the hallway.
If she would have just left the class, when told by the teacher, none of this would have happened.
If she would have stood up and followed the SRO out of the class, none of this happens.
Be she a good girl, she din du nuffin.
You are right opv. The masses get fooled by the liberal media every day. They did it again.