S.C. deputy filmed slamming teen girl out of desk, dragging her away

You do what this guy did.

If the races are reversed - or it's white on white or black on black - this isn't a story.

 

I never considered the racial angle at all. I just saw a full grown man violently throwing a teenager to the ground. I don't know how you handle this but THIS was not it.

 

We shouldn't do that because A) phones don't resist arrest, people do, and B) bad kids won't follow the rules anyway.

 

I don't know HC. Some version of "THIS" was probably going to go down. Unless you're willing to allow the student to exercise that degree of veto power over the classroom, she's going to be hauled out of there, and I suspect there's no way to make "hauled out" look pretty.

 

You really believe a man throwing around a teenage girl is only a story because of race?

 

If teenagers act like they're raised by wolves, then they should be treated that way.

 

There is a black parents teachers association in the district. There must be some reason for that, and why they're not just members of the local PTA. Maybe there have been previous issues about race in the district?

 

There may not be a way to make hauling a student out look pretty, but there sure as hell is a way to not make it look horrific. Quite frankly, I don't think you can ever make an arrest in a school look pretty.

Good school resource officers learn to negotiate with teenagers to get a desired outcome, not jump past three steps on their use-of-force continuum in under 10 seconds for a student who is not exhibiting any threats.

 

I might once again call your attention to this portion of the article:

"The person who posted the Instagram video says the student was initially asked to leave the class for telling the teacher that she would not put away her phone. The poster says the teacher disciplined the student with a write-up for being disrespectful and disobedient. After being asked to leave again, and her refusing, an administrator came to remove her, she refused, and that is when the SRO was called in.

The poster of the video claims when Fields got to the classroom, he asked her to get up from her desk 4 or 5 times and again, she tells him no. After moving objects from around the student, and asking again to leave the classroom, and her refusing, that is where you see the officer getting physical."

Does that really sound like they skipped three steps in under 10 seconds? Perhaps it appears that way because we're only seeing the very end of the encounter on this video, but it sure sounds like they had tried negotiation far beyond what was reasonably necessary and exhausted their other options at the point when he finally grabbed her.

 

Yes, it does. She wasn't a threat to the officer or anyone around her. There was no reason to move beyond verbalization - calm, nonthreatening commands. This officer jumped from verbalization to hard hands, skipping over raised volume verbalization and soft hands. And he did that way too quickly.

 

This is the problem with a story like this. I'll admit when I first heard about this, I saw the video and didn't investigate it further until later. My initial reaction was similar to most - asshole officer doing asshole things and getting caught on tape deserves what he gets. That is the reaction most people are going to have because they are only going to see the video and read the headline, which offer no context and only fodder for knee-jerk reactions like my own.

But after reading more about it, I'm wondering the same as others. What else could the officer/administrator/teacher do here? At some point, he is going to have to put his hands on her. Once it gets to that point, it is going to get really ugly, really fast, regardless of how great of an officer he is.

 

Not for nothing, but this could all be cleared up pretty easily if any of these fucking "reporters" would actually "report" the story and not just open their social media accounts and take everything they see or read as gospel.