Disrupting school is a crime in South Carolina, a misdemeanor carrying a possible penalty of ninety days imprisonment or a thousand dollar fine, and Sheriff Lott had no qualms about pronouncing the girl’s guilt, even though what he meant by “disrupting” sounded singularly vague; there is no allegation, for example, that she was screaming or throwing things in the class, but, rather, as the Sheriff haltingly put it, “she wasn’t doing what the other students were doing…. As a result, she suffers injuries to her ribs, back, neck, shoulder; a broken arm, and abrasions to her face”, a statement from the page reads.
Advertisement
But to Fields’ boss, Sheriff Leon Lott, a very different picture emerges from that 15-second video.
Hostin, aghast at his assertion, said, “I don’t need to know [what happened before]”, while Lemon, who aggressively and patronizingly talked over her, had the last word: “You don’t know she wasn’t resisting, you weren’t there”.
Dozens of people flocked to the South Carolina State House for a Black Girls Lives Matter rally to voice their concerns about the incident at Spring Valley High School.
I don’t know what school officials or his parents did to help James turn around, but I know what they didn’t do: They didn’t have him arrested. As of this publishing, it has raised over $42,000 even though the original goal was $25,000.
Sadly, the criminal justice system has shown little interest in prosecuting and convicting police officers accused of brutality and violence.
Lott also requested the FBI investigate the incident for possible criminal charges. “And based on that, that was a violation of our policy”, Sheriff Lott stated. “I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all'”.
The most tragic aspect of the Spring Valley High incident is how common it is. A video of the incident shows the officer aggressively moving into the boy’s personal space while he and his fellow officer have Hughes cornered. If you look at the video, you’ll see the other students looking on with no surprise. After all, it was their teacher who requested the officer’s assistance.
At least one student recorded his comments. According to the Sacramento Bee newspaper, a 13-year-old and two 15-year-old students were arrested, charged with battery on school staff, but there was another casualty. They didn’t call the police. (Yesterday, the Times reported on an internal memo at the Success Academy, a charter school in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, which mentioned encouraging certain first-graders to withdraw from the school, in part by calling 911 if they caused trouble.) It is as if there is a general wariness toward children, particularly black or other minority children, or perhaps a blindness to the fact that they are children at all.
Advertisement
There ought to be no reason for law enforcement to routinely police schools. To justify their presence, cops have been given titles like “school resource officer”. “They had no problems with the physical part”.
