A cop in South Carolina was called in to deal with an unruly student at a high school. The student was on her phone and not listening to teachers or administrators. The officer tried dealing with the student verbally but then flipped the student out of her desk and tossed her across the floor before arresting her. Cenk Uygur, Brett Erlich (Pop Trigger), and Hannah Cranston (Think Tank) hosts of The Young Turks discuss.
Was the police officer out of line and used excessive force? How would you have dealt with the student? Let us know in the comments below.
Read more here: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/sc-st…
“South Carolina high school student who witnessed her classmate being physically abused by a school resource officer was arrested and held on $1,000 for filming the incident.
Niya Kenny, 18, told WLTX she was shocked and disturbed when she saw Officer Ben Fields flipping her female classmate out of her desk and pinning her to the ground for refusing to leave class.
“I was screaming ‘What the f, what the f is this really happening?’ I was praying out loud for the girl,” Kenny told WLTX. “I just couldn’t believe this was happening I was just crying and he said, since you have so much to say you are coming too. I just put my hands behind my back.”
Comments
There’s a natural human tendency, as rights are eroded, for people to be more aware and more likely to defend those rights and become more obstinate in the face of unreasonable authority.
I think that’s what we’re seeing here. She believes she did nothing wrong, which may or may not be the case, but she knows her rights are being violated regardless. Standing up for your rights is exactly the sort of defiance morons like the one here can’t stand. We don’t need more idiots like this guy in our schools or in the police. He should never have had the job in the first place.
I agree that this situation was egregious, and I agree that this officer should have been punished and let me say I love your show, I’m a member, studio donator and agree with 90% of what you guys put out. But John and Cenk are way off base when they try to broaden the story to cover all schools. There is a certain amount of classroom management that you should expect from a teacher and principal. The abilities vary greatly from teacher to teacher and administrator to administrator. But there comes a point when a teacher has to be able to say, “You’re disrupting the learning of the other students, you have to get out now”.
Cenk’s little anecdotes from the good ole days, when he could be a shit and mess with the teachers and lay on the desks, is Not Normal behavior. 95% of students that go to school have been raised by their parents to believe it is their job to learn and not disrupt others learning. How many students are dumber today because they had the misfortune to be placed in a class with Cenk before he had figured out not to be a dick. And the comments made about, “maybe the child is going through something difficult, you need to ask questions and work with the child”. A teacher cannot make the decision to allow a child to end the learning of a class because one is going through something difficult. If they can manage to get a disturbed child engaged, great! But if they can’t, you gotta go son. Work it out outside the classroom. I would be livid if my son’s teacher told me they skipped reading and math because “John was working through some really tough issues. We just allowed him to act out because he needs to vent.”
The parents who lay a foundation for becoming a miscreant and then gleefully drop them off at school so it can be someone else’s problem for 8 hours and they can get a break, have to be educated on the best practices for raising children early on. It is not a teacher’s job to re-write the programming of bad parents. So Fuck you Cenk for your comment about “Try Harder”. My wife was a good enough teacher, she probably could have gotten you to get off the fucking desks and pay attention. With ten years of teaching, an Early Childhood Education degree, a master’s degree in Education, an administrator’s license and 2 years as a principal she knows all the tricks to engage students. She never had a child she couldn’t properly redirect. Until this year when a child who was violently disruptive, over the course of many weeks had to be dealt with. Flipping over desks, screaming, shoving metal objects into electrical sockets, running from the school, fighting children, shoving my 5’3” wife against the wall. He has already been suspended the maximum days allowed by law and it’s only October. I care that the kid’s parents just got divorced, but if my son is in that class, I want him removed. If he is being violent than he needs to be forcibly removed.
My wife isn’t allowed to act in that capacity and I don’t want her to. I want the SRO to come and handle it. So John’s pathetic straw man argument that the only two choices are manage the child or be okay with him being thrown across the room is bull shit. I want force used, not excessive force. My wife is a damn good administrator, she is not a psychologist or a martial artist. If you are picturing someone with those extra credentials on top of all the others, in the trenches, you better be willing to pay $300K a year, because there are probably only 300 in the country.
I have been watching this story carefully over the last couple days to try and get as much information as I can. From what I gather from the interviews with her classmates this was a quiet student who never bothered the other students. She was caught by the teacher with her cell phone out and asked to hand it over. According to Tony Robinson Jr. she was almost apologetic and asked to not get kicked out of class. She didn’t want to give up her phone and kept saying she did nothing wrong. At this point “Officer Slam” was brought in and escalated the situation almost instantly. She was not belligerent, she was not yelling and swearing, she was sitting quietly in her chair and saying she did nothing wrong. And for this “crime” she was tossed around like an animal by officer Fields. Watching this video is absolutely sickening. Watching the people who stand up for this officer has me losing faith in humanity. This is a fucking 16 year old girl and she was violently assaulted by a 300 pound man.
Look around at the reactions of the other students. These are not reactions of people who are seeing this behavior for the first time.
This officer should be fired and charged with assault the same as any other person would be in this situation. This was not a situation where the cop thought she may have a gun or he was unsure of any variables. It was a 16 year old student sitting in class.
And Sheriff Lott saying she got some punches in is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I would like to see someone grab sheriff Lott from behind and put him in a violent choke-hold and we can see what his arms instinctively do. The fact that officer Fields wasn’t fired immediately is an indictment on the whole disgusting system and the systemic racism that exists.
The criminalization of students creating this school-to-prison pipeline is outrageous. Two girls were arrested and facing criminal charges, one for having her cell phone out and not wanting to get kicked out of class and the other for standing up for a fellow classmate getting violently assaulted while a teacher and administrator stood by and watched. Politicians and the society as a whole not finding this completely unacceptable makes me glad myself and my children live and will grow up in a more just society outside of America.