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

Was she preventing every other student from getting an education? That's something I'm unclear on. Reading the description in the OP's article, she was clearly being insubordinate, and she clearly deserved to be punished, but there's nothing that I read that indicated that instruction couldn't continue.

Though it's possible I missed it.

 

I don't think it ever becomes legal to knock the shit out of her for that. What I do think is that at some point it becomes legal, indeed even necessary, to FORCE her to move. When you begin applying force, shit happens. I don't think that's a good thing, mind you, but if you're not even willing to run the risk that such shit might happen, you might as well shut down the school.

 

The HS I attended was a co-ed Catholic school that had been separate boys and girls schools for decades before they merged. The all-boys school had a priest who had been a Gold Gloves boxer. Anybody who got caught fighting in school had to step into the ring with him.

Yep, the school had a boxing ring in the gym. This was the 70s.

 

And if the resource officer had done that, there would be no debate. But he didn't "knock the shit out of her." That phrase is loaded and it does not properly describe what he did.

He grabbed her to forcibly remove her from the classroom and she struggled. He didn't flip the desk over. It was pulled over because she tried to fight him. He didn't "body slam" her, as I heard one newscaster put it. He did drag her out of the room.

To be fair, I haven't seen all of the videos. Just one, which picks up just as he reaches for her. I don't know what was said. I just know what we saw, and some of the descriptions I've been reading here and elsewhere are flat-out wrong.

I'm not saying the resource officer was right in how he handled the situation. I'm saying people are allowing their emotional reaction to get in the way of taking an objective look at the video.

 

Just as in my response to dixiehack, this is not accurate. He did not "throw her around." He tried to pull her from the desk and she fought him, which is how the desk and the girl ended up on the ground. He did drag her across the floor and subdue her. Some of y'all need to at least make an attempt at objectivity rather than use inflammatory, inaccurate language.

 

An insubordinate student creates an atmosphere of turmoil in the class whether she is being loud or not. Every kid knows she's not behaving correctly and is thinking about it, not the lesson. If I were a parent of one of the other kids I wouldn't care at all what happened to her. My kid is there to learn, if another isn't get her the fuck out of the class, any way necessary.

 

I don't know what was said on pages 3-9, but here's my take.

The officer had very little choice other than to forcibly remove the student from the desk and classroom.

However, anyone who thinks the level of force this police officer used was necessary is a stone-cold fucking moron. He grabbed her by the head, flipped the desk, pulled her out of it and fucking threw her across the room. He threw that 13- or 15-year old girl probably 6-10 feet. What. The. Fuck.

Yes, pulling her out of the chair isn't going to look pretty. Once out of the desk, the 220 pound officer could've very easily carried the young girl out of the classroom without that gross over application of force. If you think otherwise, you are a fucking idiot. Please don't reproduce. Especially if we can't have abortions anymore. Plain and simple.

 

But why not just let her sit there and then suspend her? That was an idea on one of the previous pages.

 

I mean, it doesn't have to be a fatal blow, but a lot goes into it that I know nothing about - exactly what the kid is doing (are they quiet but disobedient, or actively disrupting class?), the quality of the teacher, the rapport that's been developed with the rest of the class, etc.
Strong learning continues in classes across the country every day with an insubordinate student in them, and classes get derailed every day, too. It's definitely a situation where the choices the teacher makes in the moment, as well as all the previous classroom management choices loom large.

Obviously, having an insubordinate student in class is sub-optimal for the learning environment, but so is what happened.

I don't know enough to have strong thoughts on what the teacher did or didn't do. But there were other paths that could have been chosen than this one. It's an interesting case study in classroom management.

 

Tell me again how that is any less disruptive.

 

Because then she's being a distraction for the rest of the class, and with the suspension, you would have parents whining that suspending a kid for having a cellphone is too excessive.

Granted, it's highly unlikely the other kids are going to be able to concentrate on schoolwork after seeing their classmate get slammed to the ground. But there has to be consequences for actions, instead of just ignoring it. And besides, as Crash Davis put it, they're kids. Scare them. Maybe the rest of the class sees what happened, and decides to behave themselves.