(A video of one incident is here). On Monday, the sheriff placed Deputy Fields on unpaid leave, and asked for a federal investigation. And it has produced terrible outcomes.
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Kevin Quinn, president of the Arizona School Resource Officers Association, said he understands how the officer can be seen in a bad light.
On Tuesday, we followed Officer Mark Deeds, one of four resource officers in the Ozark School District.
A school security guard in South Carolina is under fire after video shows him forcibly removing a student from her seat. But the eerie quiet of those watching, and thankfully recording, what went down in that classroom in South Carolina reflects how frequently incidents like this occur, how black women and their bodies are so regularly under siege that no one bats an eye.
If your goals, like the “resource officer” at Spring Valley High School, are to go into the classroom to flex your authority instead of your capacity to care-then maybe it’s time you should find a new job. But he calls the video “disturbing”. Officers are always on hand to give guidance and offer assistance, but administration takes the lead on incidents that aren’t criminal.
And when that time comes, officers are trained on how to make an arrest, including a resistant student. If possible, officers start with physical restraint, either overpowering the student or taking them to the ground.
“Cops are at a school in the event a crime is being committed”, he said.
It’s important to take steps toward reform, advocates say, because without limits there’s been a school-to-prison pipeline. Eight states mandate referral for theft. In all but seven states, black students were referred to police and courts for discipline in greater proportions than white students, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity.
But he insisted that the girl who refused to leave the room, and another who was arrested after coming to the other girls defense, deserved to be arrested. The incident raised the issue of Muslims being profiled.
“I ran for the school board during the last election”, Harmon said. School shootings appear to be creating yet more political support to put cops in schools, particularly since the Newtown massacre.
“School shootings did not cause it” says Kupchik, noting that the rise in school police predates the Columbine massacre.
Yet many districts have failed to institute even basic reforms.
“I think we have to ask ourselves a real question”. SROs used pepper spray to break up a large fight at Anderson High School earlier this month. The rest of us can not just sit quietly as this happens over and over again. It also reflects obtuseness on the part of his superiors who thought he was temperamentally suited for police work, especially in a school. Across the USA, African Americans are more likelier to be disciplined and to face harsher sanctions. It was evidently shot by someone using the video camera in a smartphone. They are about a mentality that needs to be rooted out of law enforcement.
Reforms are possible, and activists nationwide have in recent years pushed back at zero-tolerance discipline. “Schools have to consider more effective ways for supporting students in the classroom when disciplinary issues arise”. One is that a number of school districts, such as Los Angeles, are outlining the role of police more clearly and are eliminating the broad category of “willful defiance” from their causes for suspension. Citations had already declined from 11,698 in 2009-10 to 3,499 in 2013-2014, according to the LA Times. “They are more in a position of protecting campuses than policing them”.
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This year, the district’s task force on student misconduct recommended the adoption of policies specifying “a consistent set of consequences for infractions at each level”.
