A Takedown in the Classroom

[rugcat]

I see your point, but in a general sense, why should there be certified LEO's in schools? I do disagree that the officer did nothing wrong. His whole approach was asinine. At a minimum, since there was no emergency, he should have cleared the classroom and called for a female officer. I know I am ancient, but we never had police in school, we never had them when I was on the road. I don't know when the trend started or why. I suspect an over-reaction to something. I may research it unless someone actually knows why the concept began.

I'm probably more ancient than you are, but we always had school resource officers where I worked. It was an assignment that was requested, not assigned at random. It certainly wasn't considered a desirable post by everyone, but the officers that requested the school posts really believed that by working with kids that age they could make a difference. And they actually solved quite a few crimes because the kids at school who trusted them would tell them things. And they were able to award off trouble as well before it boiled over.

I think the concept of using police as a positive force in the community and not just the people you call when a criminal act is taking place is an excellent one. Of course, it's the same old story – if you have a good officer it's a tremendous help to everyone; if you have a bad officer it's a disaster for everyone.

If, as is standard, there is one school resource officer per school, then there is no female officer to call. I'm not sure why you think a female officer should be called in the first place – do you think only a female officer is capable of dealing with a female subject?

And certainly, the school resource officer is expected to deal with problems like recalcitrant students without having to call for back up because a student won't leave the classroom.

Now, his decision to grab the student and forcibly eject her, or arrest her, was shall we say, ill considered. But considering that he was also an assistant coach for the football team it's not that big a surprise that he would opt for immediate and forceful action as opposed to, say, de-escalation.

 

[T Robinson]

We were trained that if time permitted (which it did in this case), that there always be two and one be the same sex as the person being arrested. Of course you do what you need to do in a different situation, but that does not apply in this scenario.

 

[JetFueledCar]

We were trained that if time permitted (which it did in this case), that there always be two and one be the same sex as the person being arrested. Of course you do what you need to do in a different situation, but that does not apply in this scenario.

Was the student being arrested? Are we seriously criminalizing teenagers acting like teenagers? How frakking old are these teachers that they need to run and tell Teacher Policeman when their kindergarten classmates students behave like kindergartners students? How old are the people training them? How is this reality and not a YA dystopia? I mean, I knew it happened in theory, but seriously, arrested for refusing to leave a class? Be honest, teachers, you're not even teaching them anything useful! Your curricula are designed by the standardized tests!

*rants about US schools for another hour*

Back to your regularly-scheduled outrage against police brutality and the systems that enable it.

Oh hey, this is what that email from ColorOfChange was about. I should read my email more than once a week...

 

[T Robinson]

They arrested two of them.

 

[JetFueledCar]

They arrested two of them.

Yes, but my impression was that decision was made after the takedown. I might have gotten muddled because one of them was arrested for standing up for the other...

 

[kuwisdelu]

Reality has been a YA dystopia for a long time now.

 

[Fruitbat]

When there is an officer stationed at a school I assume it's because there's a demonstrated need for it, since it's expensive.

Also, it's vital that those in authority remain in authority and not allow students to simply ignore their directives just because they're not being violent or disruptive at the time. The rest of them see what that says about who's in charge and if they don't firmly get it that you, not they, are in charge, it will just not go well at all.

That's in reply to some of the comments on this thread but all that said, yes, the officer obviously made a poor decision. The student could have received a head injury or the desk slammed into another student. An officer escalating a non-violent brattiness incident into a scene like that is a poor response.

Students can get ticketed by a police officer for disrupting class. That could have been done, let the rest of the class see it, then get on with class and let her sit there. In the future, even parents who don't want to be bothered with disciplining their kids will often change their mind when they have to go in front of a judge with their child and pay a hefty fine.

 

[LittlePinto]

Yes, but my impression was that decision was made after the takedown. I might have gotten muddled because one of them was arrested for standing up for the other...

Yeah, the second one stood up for the first and was arrested for "disturbing schools."

It seems to me that school was already pretty disturbed for that class...and not due to the initial actions of one stubborn teen.

I am very curious to know what kind of classroom management training the teacher and school administrator had. I'm not particularly impressed by it, whatever it was.

 

[nighttimer]

For what it's worth, school resource officers have been posted at schools for decades.

They are not necessarily there to deal with criminal activity, although in schools where metal detectors are required to make sure some of the students don't bring knives or guns to classes and you could get shot on the playground, having a full-time officer assigned to a school just not seem like a bad idea to me.

Of course it wouldn't.

THIS student didn't bring a knife, didn't bring a gun, wasn't involved in any criminal activity and didn't shoot anyone on the playground. What she did was refuse to turn off her cell phone and for that some jacked-up jackboot thug bounces her around like a ball while everyone else looks on in horror and fear. Horror at what Fields was doing. Fear that Fields would do it to them next.

Why shouldn't he? There's always going to be someone who can justify whatever a cop feels like he wants to do. When some psycho with a badge writes a piece where he beats his chest and proclaims "I'm a cop. If you don't want to get hurt, don't challenge me" there's a cop apologist to chirp "This guy sounds like a really good cop to me."

If a cop says, Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me and that's what a really good cop sounds like, that's a cop who should have his badge taken away because that's a cop drunk with power and believing his tin badge and big gun makes him a fucking bad ass.

But school resource officers are individuals assigned to specific schools-- the same officer, not a different cop every day. They interact with students and act as quasi teachers and counselors as well as keeping order. They get to know the students by name, and who's having trouble; they know who's causing trouble, they know who is liable to get into trouble. They build a relationship with the students, and the good ones, of which there are many, are a fantastic resource for the school.

In this case, a student was apparently using a cell phone and the teacher told her to leave the classroom. She refused. The vice principal who was also there also told her to leave, she refused. So they called the school resource officer.

He came in and told her she had to leave. She refused. So he decided to physically remove her. That's the point where things went bad. Up to then, I really don't see any problem with the actions of the teachers or the officer who was responding to a request from the teacher and administrator.

Of course you wouldn't. The past is prologue.

Most of the orders that cops give are along the lines of "take your hands out of your pockets." Those that refuse to comply, or start being verbally abusive and asking "why?" are indeed asking for trouble.

THIS student wasn't being verbally abusive. She didn't have her hands in her pocket. She had a bad attitude, didn't comply and for that she got brutalized. This cretin must feel like a big man sitting around with his cop buddies telling war stories and bragging how he showed her. Bet she'll move her ass next time. Bet when she sees HIM coming down the hallway she'll turn around and run like a whipped dog.

What kind of "security" did Ben Fields provide? The kind of security the slave breaker provided the uppity niggers on the plantation who wouldn't mind and sassed back? Yeah, beat that little uppity nigger down. She forgot her place. Remind her of it.

Cops like Ben Fields are like the cops who beat down Becton and Blake and beat down Sandra Bland and killed Tamir Rice and Oscar Grant and Eric Garner and Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo and Walter Scott and NONE of them are "good cops." They are bad cops, rotten cops, brutal cops, killer cops and they will never stop. Not ever. Not until they are stopped.

There is a limit to how much abuse a whipped dog will take. There is no "justice" in the American injustice system and Black people cannot place their faith in a system which has never valued or protected us. If never has and it never will. It's one thing to target young Black men and women, but quite another when Black children are being targeted.

The moment is coming where those being brutalized will have to go looking for their own justice. Things are coming to a flashpoint. What happens when it flashes over? Being a bad-ass bully with a badge may not be bad ass enough. This is a confrontation nobody should want because nobody can win, but damn if there aren't forces spoiling for it.

BLACK PEOPLE ARE NOT DOGS. YOU CAN SHOOT A DOG BUT DOGS DON'T SHOOT BACK.

 

[Xelebes]

I have to agree with NT, this does look like an example of the harsher treatment afforded to black children when it comes to doling out discipline. There is an indifference from the one being tasked to dole out the discipline and instead of treating a child as a child, they are handling the child as a haybale, just some damned farmwork that a strong working man has to do.

 

[Don]

Reality has been a YA dystopia for a long time now.

Is it time to call it a police state yet?

TBH, I know that chart above isn't strictly accurate. I hear the food's better in prison, they still have PE periods, and prisoners get free healthcare, dental care, free textbooks and three meals a day. I guess that's easy to do when you spend more per prisoner on prisons than you spend per child on schools.

 

[Once!]

We don't know the full story. The video starts part way through.

The student seems to have been disruptive by refusing to put her phone away or get up.

The force used by the officer seems to be wholly excessive.

I have not seen any evidence suggesting that this happened because she is black.

We will not see all sides of the story until the investigation is complete. The school will not be able to comment on individual cases.

It's an individual case. It does not mean that all schools, police officers, teenagers, black people or white people are "good" or "bad".

 

[Kylabelle]

Here's a fairly complete account, although in a couple of places pronoun antecedents seem unclear:

http://news.yahoo.com/sheriff-seeks-information-officer-student-confrontation-103158239.html#


The young woman is reported to have pled before resisting that she wasn't doing anything wrong. The issue was the teacher wanted to *take* her phone. Another student, who verbally objected to the throwdown and subsequent actions, was also arrested and has spoken out. It's also unclear whether the first gal was texting or had, as she asserted, just taken her phone out for a moment. I am not necessarily believing either her account or the teacher's.

Personally, however, I don't need to see some kind of "evidence" to conclude that this is an act of racism. Imagine a young white woman in the same circumstance. Even if she were stubborn, I doubt she would be thrown on the floor.

The Sheriff is quoted as saying the video made him want to vomit. The deputy has apparently had issues before.

 

[LittlePinto]

Is it time to call it a police state yet?

TBH, I know that chart above isn't strictly accurate. I hear the food's better in prison, they still have PE periods, and prisoners get free healthcare, dental care, free textbooks and three meals a day. I guess that's easy to do when you spend more per prisoner on prisons than you spend per child on schools.

Negative reinforcement is removing an adverse stimulus to increase the frequency of a desired behavior. I wish people would stop confusing it with positive punishment, which is introducing an adverse stimulus to decrease the frequency of an undesired behavior. The best way I can think of negative reinforcement applying to the classroom is if the teacher cuts the day's homework because students were so well focused in class. Somehow, I don't think that's what the list writer had in mind.

(Not targeted at you, Don. Just a general comment on whoever wrote the list.)

 

[nighttimer]

I have not seen any evidence suggesting that this happened because she is black.

We will not see all sides of the story until the investigation is complete. The school will not be able to comment on individual cases.

It's an individual case. It does not mean that all schools, police officers, teenagers, black people or white people are "good" or "bad".

You are correct this is an individual case. Yet, accumulate enough "individual cases" and the trends and patterns begin to emerge and even without "all sides of the story" some conclusions can be drawn.

Black children are punished more frequently and harshly than their White counterparts.

But however extreme the Columbia case may be, it is not unusual for school discipline to fall heavily on black students, either in South Carolina or nationwide. Across the U.S., African Americans are more likelier to be disciplined and to face harsher sanctions. One reason may be the increasing presence of police in schools. The video “shows the dangers of increased police presence in schools …. we are seeing this conflation between safety and discipline,” Janel George of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund told The Guardian.


At the same time, however, school discipline is its own universe, but one that reflects the way the criminal-justice system handles adults. In both systems, African Americans, and African American men in particular, tend to be penalized at higher rates and more harshly.


South Carolina is one of the 19 states that still allows corporal punishment in schools.


According to Palmetto State law, “The governing body of each school district may provide corporal punishment for any pupil that it deems just and proper.” Unlike in some states, there’s no need to get parental permission first. (Corporal punishment delivered in loco parentis is also exempt from state law governing child abuse.)
Nationwide, corporal punishment is doled out far more to black children than white ones or Hispanic ones. “Black children were nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to be corporally punished than White children, and nearly eight times more likely to be corporally punished than Hispanic children,” the Children’s Defense Fund calculated in 2014. CDF found that 838 students are hit a day in U.S. public schools.


South Carolina isn’t one of the biggest states for corporal punishment, with about 150 cases in 2011-2012, according to Department of Education figures. But those students who are punished are highly likely to be African American. Black students make up 36 percent of South Carolina schools, but they account for 58 percent of corporal punishment cases.


Expand out to discipline overall and the disparities get starker. A University of Pennsylvania study found that 60 percent of suspended students in South Carolina are black. (The analysis found large disparities across the South, as compared to the national average.) A 2013 report by the South Carolina Advisory Commission to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found something similar by studying three specific districts.


“In all three school examined districts, African Americans were significantly more likely to be suspended and placed into alternative education programs than white students,” the committee found. “In addition, in two of the three districts African American students were also much more likely than white students to be expelled.”

One of the more striking things about the videos from South Carolina is the impassivity of the other students in the classroom. Other than the student filming, the others look on, somewhat frozen. Perhaps that’s because seeing a black student harshly dealt with simply didn’t register as unusual for them.

It's a legitimate question to ask why Black students are on the receiving end of heavy handed discipline. There is no legitimate explanation for the assault.

 

[robjvargas]

But why was Fields at Spring Valley High School body slamming girls in the first place? Why is any police officer providing security--or the muscle--at any school? Are these students or criminals.

Whenever it was school systems decided to abdicate their roles as disciplinarians and turn it over to the police, that was a decision bound to bring about these sort of incidents. If teachers and administrators can't control their unruly, uncooperative and stank attitude students, maybe they shouldn't be teachers and administrators in the first damn place. I know...I know...kids are different today. They have no respect for anyone. Not their parents, not their teachers, not even themselves.
...
Everyone is to blame. We have criminalized a generation of children and we have permitted criminal solutions to be applied to them. It's not right and it needs to stop.

Someone corroborate or refute, please, but I believe school liability regulations have led to this. Schools can be sued for discipline to students. And school professionals, even school district disciplinary officers, aren't afforded a lot of the liability protections that police enjoy. Add in that (it seems) more and more parents deny that their children are capable of wrongdoing, and there you have it.

However, NT, make no mistake: I agree with the rest of your post. What I just said is my understanding of how we got to this. But "this" is wrong.

 

[BoF]

Apparently Ben Fields will be fired.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...na-deputy-ben-fields-be-fired-sources-n452881

Maybe a job cleaning toilets in a Trump Hotel would teach him a bit of humility.

 

[nighttimer]

Someone corroborate or refute, please, but I believe school liability regulations have led to this. Schools can be sued for discipline to students. And school professionals, even school district disciplinary officers, aren't afforded a lot of the liability protections that police enjoy. Add in that (it seems) more and more parents deny that their children are capable of wrongdoing, and there you have it.

However, NT, make no mistake: I agree with the rest of your post. What I just said is my understanding of how we got to this. But "this" is wrong.

I agree robjvargas and frankly, it's disgusting anyone could excuse unnecessary brutality as exercising authority.

Add to the fact Fields has a prior history of bad acts and his excessive force looks much worse than, shall we say, "ill considered."

Fields, who also coaches football at the high school, has prevailed against accusations of excessive force and racial bias before.

Trial is set for January in the case of an expelled student who claims Fields targeted blacks and falsely accused him of being a gang member in 2013. In another case, a federal jury sided with Fields after a black couple accused him of excessive force and battery during a noise complaint arrest in 2005. A third lawsuit, dismissed in 2009, involved a woman who accused him of battery and violating her rights during a 2006 arrest.

 

[rugcat]

Here's another cell phone related takedown in a classroom:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zpHkzeYcW70

And another racially motivated incident with a white teacher, a black student and evil school resource officers:

Three students were taken to juvenile hall after a wild fight where the school's principal was body-slammed.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article41678394.html#storylink=cpy

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RXta9PMsCyo

 

[nighttimer]

The wonderful thing about the world wide web is it you search hard enough for it, you can find something to support an irrelevant and diversionary tangent even if the supporting "proof" has absolutely nothing to do with the current topic.

And now Officer Bennie the Bodyslammer will have plenty of free time to do the same.

 

[Ambrosia]

The deputy has been fired.


Sheriff talks about meeting with fired officer

 

[BoF]

Here's another cell phone related takedown in a classroom:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zpHkzeYcW70

And another racially motivated incident with a white teacher, a black student and evil school resource officers:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RXta9PMsCyo

I get the sarcasm when you write “evil school resource officers.” Kids are fighting, the principal gets body slammed, police arrive, and the students leave escorted by police.

This deflection in no way exonerates Ben Fields.

I am willing to meet you half way rugcat. Violence against student should not be tolerated period, whether it’s source is teachers, coaches, administrators, or police officer.

I’ve always been what some people would call a malcontent when it comes to “the system.”

My first teaching job was in a town called Cleburne—about twenty-five miles South of Fort Worth. On my first day I told students I did not care if they chewed gum as long as they wrapped in paper and dropped it in the waste basket on the way out. Three years later, my principal called me and ask if I let the kids chew gum.

Then there was the matter of suspension. Students were not allowed to make up work when suspended. I ignored the policy and sent assignments home with a girl friend or sibling.

Like most new teachers, I did have some discipline problem. It was common in those days for administrators and coaches to use heavy wooden paddles on students. One vice principal told me I needed to “bust” them. I reminded him that he had the same kids lined up for busting nearly every day and it didn’t seem to be working. During my third year I decided I didn’t want to teach at Cleburne anymore. Part of my decision was not based on the culture of physical violence, but of emotional violence. My fourth period class was right after lunch. The principal came in and removed four of my “hippie” boys. Later that day I learned that they had been expelled for the rest of the year for smoking pot. Why would counseling or a short suspension not have achieved the same results?

Violence (whether physical or emotional) needs to be eradicated from public schools. Using violence against students only sends the message that violence is acceptable. It is not.

You seem to be enlightened on the vast majority of issues rugcat, but let me gently say, I think you have blind spot when it comes to police brutality.

 

[ErezMA]

The deputy has been fired.


Sheriff talks about meeting with fired officer

I like what came out of the Sheriff's mouth. I felt he handled this professionally and objectively.

 

[rugcat]

This deflection in no way exonerates Ben Fields.

If you will read my posts, there's nothing in them that supports what the officer did.

The "deflection" is in response to opinions that hold that schools are equivalent to prisons and that school resource officers are just another example of the brutal, racist thugs that make up every police department.

What those videos show is something that also happens in schools,but seldom get national exposure. An incident where excessive force is used against a student is no more the norm than students using violence against teachers, and probably less so.

You seem to be enlightened on the vast majority of issues rugcat, but let me gently say, I think you have blind spot when it comes to police brutality.

That's a very kind characterization, but I would say that just because I disagree with most members on the board about many incidents involving confrontations with police doesn't mean I unaccountably have lost all sense of reason, nor does it necessarily indicate a blind spot.

In fact, one might consider exactly where else that blind spot might be located.

 

[JetFueledCar]

I'm just relieved that finally one of these cases ends (and it's not even over yet) with the cop being punished.