South Carolina police officer investigated after slamming student to ground at Spring Valley High

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, she should blame herself but police officer do look like he loves to throw people around.

Whether he enjoyed it or not, he didn't have too many options. Either he gets her out by force or he uses a taser, which would hardly have caused less outrage from the usual quarters.

Yeah--that doesn't look like he's throwing her across the room, but rather out of the desk she's in. Without knowing what came before I don't think we can tell whether he was acting reasonably or not.

 

[Derec]

What would a wealthy boarding school have done I wonder?

Expelled the brat and kept the expensive tuition. The parents would have seen to the rest.

 

[Derec]

It is a SCHOOL! She is a STUDENT! Try NOT HATING your idea of THUGS and START SEEING the 15 year old girl!

Where do you get the idea that she is 15? Her classmate that was interviewed is 18 and I doubt Little Miss Rag Doll is some sort of math prodigy taking algebra her sophomore year.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When you ask yourself, "what's more important losing one class, or refraining from assaulting a kid?" It's a lot like the question, "Does this arrest NEED to happen? So badly that I am willing to kill over it?"

The police (or resource officers) do not need to "win" every encounter in order to keep order. They really really don't. They can guide and teach.

No. This would be a terrible system--it would be a major encouragement to fighting the police. This isn't a liberal fantasy world where there's always a good solution if you just look hard enough. The real world involves a lot of choices between lesser evils--and yanking her out of the chair is the lesser evil here--although a stun gun might have been better.

But you know what? Dragging the chair to the hallway wouldn't have even looked silly. It would have looked compassionate, caring. He would have made his _next_ encounter much easier by being that cop who cares about you instead of that cop who is a brainless brute.

Till she gets hurt on the doorway.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So now seeing Derec's post of the eyewitness, everyone involved has to ask if it was worth it to disrupt the entire class and risk injury over a phone.

It would be SO FUCKING EASY to say, "you need to put up the phone or you will not be allowed back into class tomorrow."

For all of you asking, "what else could they have done?" they could have done that. Let the stupid teen text on her stupid phone harming no one but herself and then have her sent to in-school suspension either at the end of class or the next day.

No violence needed AT. ALL.
No arrest record for a teen kid.
No risk of severe injury (I really can't get over how irresponsible it was of the cop not to think of that)
Just say, "kid, you can't come back tomorrow if you don't behave today. Your choice."

In other words she can use the risk of her being hurt to keep class at a standstill. You sure do like jumping from the frying pan to the fire!

 

[Derec]

Shit, I should have known. The Guardian has made "learning while black" A talking point.

And it's about as accurate as "inventing while Muslim" or "dying for Skittles" so Guardian is comparable to our own thread titles. Kind of comforting in a way.

 

[Toni]

I do not see an assault here, sorry.
Let's say you went to a cafe and for whatever reason the waitress told you you had to leave. You refused to get up and leave. Then the manager comes and tells you the same thing. You still won't budge. Then they call police and the officer tells you to leave of you'd be arrested. You still refuse so you get removed forcibly and arrested. That isn't assault either. The reason this looks bad on the surface is the small stature of the girl (but small stature doesn't imply she was in the right and the cop in the wrong) and the silly chair-desk combo so common in schools that made it harder for the cop to remove her.

Agree.

Any attempt to remove her would have resulted in the same thing. Physical distress which will allow her and her family to successfully sue the school and city and make kids in school even more unruly, uncontrollable and untouchable.

And end up rewarding her behavior.

If she was 18, he was justified in physically hauling her off. She's an adult, not a child.

How surprising that you agree with Derec.

What is your evidence that the student was 18? The student who videotaped the incident--with his cell phone, btw, suggested that she was 15 or 16. Not that being 18 makes it ok for police to brutalize students.

I am pretty sure that most of us on this board were high school students prior to the presence of SRO's in schools. Somehow, our behavior was under sufficient control that we did manage to avoid being tased, shot, thrown to the floor and dragged out of the classroom or arrested during school hours, despite numerous infractions and even some drinking, sexual activity, smoking, drug use and dealing, cheating and plagerism, theft and graffiti, not to mention bad language.

 

[Derec]

No, I believe Derec has that honor.

No, I do not. I do not think I ever mentioned race is this thread, and even if I had, race has been front and center of the reporting on this incident long before I entered this thread.

 

[Derec]

So, your theory is that the contractor poured the foundation, laid the flooring, then the desks were arranged in the future classrooms and then the walls and doors and windows went up?

Exactly!
No, of course not. I do not know the dimensions of the desks they use but have you ever moved furniture? Oftentimes they will fit one way but not another and usually with not much room to spare. One guy dragging an occupied desk through a doorway would be anything but easy.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Seriously. I dispatch police 40 hours a week and I have in the last year sent 0 officers to schools. What is it about American schools that make involving police a normal thing?

This is an extremely honest question. It's because the police are already there. Since Columbine and a whole host of school shootings, since 9/11, since Sandy Hook, police are there on the school grounds more and more. The US has changed.

Back in my day--that sounds old, I guess--students, parents, weren't coddled, paranoid, and while someone joked about the word "fascist" there is something about it where our culture has changed over the last couple of decades. Back in my day, you could walk to school and I did. Kids are now sent to school in many areas on a bus even if they live across the street. Must protect the children (unless they aren't complying)! Things that happen at the schools or news about a shooting at another school in the country lead to instant trauma. Some of us are living in a constant state of PTSD.

People use the word "necessary" now like it's water. Police at schools are necessary. Guns are necessary because it's the only thing that will stop the other crazy people. Removing someone from class--necessary. Making them get rid of a phone--necessary. Non-compliant with teacher --> necessary to call the administrator, non-compliant with administrator --> necessary to call in the school police, non-compliant with police --> necessary to violently force the person to be arrested, non-compliant with arrest --> necessary to use taser, actively resist taser --> a threat that necessarily must be shot.

What ever happened to using the guidance counselor or the nurse? or, how about asking why someone might find their phone to be "necessary" in that moment? Teachers and administrators used to handle this stuff on their own before police were on school grounds and it didn't take an arrest to do it. We're reliant on police now.

No one is stopping to think.

 

[Derec]

Well of course she needed to be slammed to the ground and dragged around. She did not obey commands like a good female should do.

Or male. There has been a link posted about a 14 year old boy in Texas being forcefully detained by an SRO. But since he was male that did not cause all the attention of this case.

She was black and female. I get it. We ALL get it, Derec.

I think the "honor" for bringing race into it belongs to you Toni.

Yeah, none of us are at all surprised at your 'joke.'

I'll be here all week.

 

[Toni]

Or male. There has been a link posted about a 14 year old boy in Texas being forcefully detained by an SRO. But since he was male that did not cause all the attention of this case.

She was black and female. I get it. We ALL get it, Derec.

I think the "honor" for bringing race into it belongs to you Toni.

Yeah, none of us are at all surprised at your 'joke.'

I'll be here all week.

So tell us about the 14 year old boy, Derec.

 

[Arctish]

Maybe that would have worked, but quite possibly not since she was clearly hell-bent on trying to get attention be defiant for its own sake.

She was clearly hell-bent on trying to get attention? What video shows that?

 

[Derec]

Again, if you did that or I did that to someone sitting in a chair, it would be assault. It is assault. The fact you think police should be able to commit assault with impunity in this case does not negate that what the officer did was assault.

Show me, using SC laws, that it was assault. And police officers are permitted to do things we are not.

 

[Derec]

I hope that was an English class this kid was taking. He needs it.

Truth. But it was actually algebra.

 

[Toni]

It is a SCHOOL! She is a STUDENT! Try NOT HATING your idea of THUGS and START SEEING the 15 year old girl!

Where do you get the idea that she is 15? Her classmate that was interviewed is 18 and I doubt Little Miss Rag Doll is some sort of math prodigy taking algebra her sophomore year.

Her classmate referenced her age as 15 or 16 on the video in the article I linked. You really should take a look.

Not that being 18 was any justification for the officer's horrific behavior.

In our very mediocre local school district, and even the piss poor one I attended, students can take algebrain 8th grade. Which is still years behind schools in most industrial nations. I'm truly sorry if you didn't have the opportunity to take algebra before you were 18.

 

[Derec]

So tell us about the 14 year old boy, Derec.

What's there to tell? I only used him as an example that, contrary to your implication, it isn't only female students SROs use force on.

 

[ZiprHead]

Our school liaison officer was "Smiley" Miley. I read a few years after I got out of school that he got that he got busted for kiddie-diddling.

 

[Derec]

Her classmate referenced her age as 15 or 16 on the video in the article I linked. You really should take a look.

I'd take it with a whole shaker of salt then.

In our very mediocre local school district, and even the piss poor one I attended, students can take algebrain 8th grade.

Being able to take it in principle and there being any likelihood that she is taking it her sophomore year are quite different animals.

Which is still years behind schools in most industrial nations. I'm truly sorry if you didn't have the opportunity to take algebra before you were 18.

You really love to make it personal, don't you? Typical lefty debating tactics - try to belittle the opponent. I took algebra long before 18, but I also know many people these days (in the US at least) enter college needing remedial algebra.

 

[Toni]

So tell us about the 14 year old boy, Derec.

What's there to tell? I only used him as an example that, contrary to your implication, it isn't only female students SROs use force on.

I'm sure ther's a lot to tell.

But I will leave it to you to look up the difference between imply and infer. It will be easier if you drop the chip on your shoulder. It can't be comfortable and it seems to be poking you in the eye. Keeping you from seeing clearly.