How many large policemen does it take to subdue a 4’10” 75 lb sophomore in High School?
If you answered less than three, you just don’t understand appropriate force:
Perez, with her mom and her brother by her side, described the chain of events that led to the officers wrestling her to the floor.
She says her reading teacher caught her using her cell phone in class, which is against school rules, and told her to go to the hallway. That’s where Perez says she was confronted by an assistant principal who demanded she relinquish the phone. Students caught using phones in class are required to turn them over to school administrators and then retrieve them at the end of the school day, for a fee.
“I just didn’t want to give up my phone,” said Perez who said she was talking to her mom who suffers from medical conditions. Perez said she was trying to make sure her mom was OK.
“She asked me for the phone and I didn’t want to give it to her, because I was scared. I ended up walking down the stairs trying to get away from the AP (assistant principal) and then she had already called the cops.”
The HISD resource officers also demanded she hang up the phone and hand it to them. Perez admitted she refused again.
‘He grabbed my hand, one of them was right here, one grabbed my hand, I didn’t want to let go of my phone because I was on the phone with mom,” she said.
Perez was detained. Her mom says she was turned away when she rushed to the school to make sure her daughter was OK. And as of Wednesday morning Perez said school officials had not returned her cell phone, in lieu of a $15 fee she would need to pay.
On the upside, they didn’t tase her to death
Cervantes
Nauseating.
Belafon
Called the police for cell phone use. Who would they call if a kid brought a knife? The National Guard?
Don’t get me wrong, the girl did just about everything wrong in the situation, but the schools determination of the appropriate use of force needs to be reexamined.
Wag
On the other hand, I agree 100% with making schools the most conducive environment possible for everyone’s learning. Cells are distracting and interfere with others. And the girl walked away from someone who tried to enforce the rules without force. And she then resisted the police. Any escalation is squarely on her shoulders.
c u n d gulag
She’s also lucky she didn’t get shot.
Her Mom’s got a medical condition, and this is how she’s treated for checking on her?!?!?!?!?!
Disgusting.
Everyone concerned needs to either be retrained, or fired.
And what does that $15 go towards?
Why even have that fee?
Oh yeah – another hidden tax on poor people.
elmo
Countdown to “You can’t tar all police with the actions of a few” in three…two…one…
It’s like I keep saying. Those darn rogue cops are making 1% of police look bad.
Rosalita
The AP called THE POLICE over a student cell phone issue before it even escalated? fuckity fuck
brent
Well you never know right? She could be one of those super strong immigrants with calves the size of cantaloupes. Those officers legitimately feared for their lives and showed admirable restraint in the face of terrible danger by not putting 30 bullets in her.
After all, she had a cellphone. She could have been calling Al Queda or ISIS for all they knew. You say she was on the phone with her mom? Well has the mom been investigated for her involvement with international terrorism? These brave, brave men were protecting us from a 70 poiund menace who could right now be hiding under our beds and killing us in our sleep.
Cervantes
@Wag:
And back. And arms. And head. And legs. And so on.
slim shady
So the Echo Chamber seems to be advocating anarchy. That’s nice. It makes for a better experience when the sophmores are calling the shots.
Calouste
In the good news for today, Ian Paisley, hatemongering Northern Irish protestant leader, has finally gone to meet his maker.
Ejoiner
Gotta say – I’ve been discretely allowing students to use devices for the last few years in my upper level classes since it allows them to access the entire global data base of the planet in seconds with great success. This year our school adopted a Bring Your Own Device policy and upgraded our wireless to allow all students to (within class rules) use their devices. Working wonderfully so far and student participation and independence is really impressive now that it’s not a constant fight between teachers and students over the phone issue. These policies are very out of date and I think we will rapidly see them change.
Oh, yeah – any administrator that calls police over a cell phone incident is incompetent and needs to be fired. Period. And the cops (again) completely mishandled this situation.
C.V. Danes
I might be dating myself, but the whole time I was in school during the 70’s and early 80’s I never once saw the police on school grounds. Not once. Sure, you would get paddled back then, but perhaps that’s better than getting wrestled to the ground by the police?
Cervantes
@Ejoiner: Does every child in your school have a “Device” they can bring to school and use?
elmo
@slim shady:
Ha! Yes, because the only thing standing between civilization and anarchy is the willingness of large armed men to put a beatdown on 70-pound teenage girls. Certainly back in my day, when teenage girls were bratty self-absorbed hellions without police interference, there was nothing but chaos in the streets. Thank God for those selfless public servants who are willing to put their bodies on the line against the threat of adolescent rule-breaking. Otherwise where would it all end?
JPL
@Wag: I’m shocked that a teenager acted inappropriately. There were other ways to handle it, though. If the rule requires that the cell phone be handed over, and if the student refuses, send the student home. The three police officers wasn’t necessary, imo.
brent
@slim shady:
Correct. Because the only alternative to using police and extreme force to restrain the misbehavior of a little girl is the complete destruction of our policy infrastructure. You got us.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
I don’t think his maker is in charge where he’s going.
Tim C.
High school teacher here. First , if the related events happened, the school was ridiculous for getting cops involved. Yeah, the kid escalated some, but this sounds like an in-school suspension level thing. On the other hand in most situations only the family gets to talk, professional school districts shouldn’t and can’t legally talk about incidents like that in schools. So only the kid family gets to tell their side to the media. But calling the campus cops over a cell phone is a failure of judgement.
elmo
@Roger Moore:
I think you’re mistaken as to who his Maker was.
El Caganer
The cops’ level of force might have been appropriate if she was exercising her Second Amendment rights, but I don’t think you have to throw somebody on the ground who’s carrying a cell phone. The story doesn’t make a lot of sense, though – if she knew she wasn’t allowed to make calls from class, why didn’t she tell the reading teacher she needed to call home and check on her mother? That shouldn’t be considered an outrageous request on her part. Whatever, the cops sure as hell didn’t need to react the way they did.
Unabogie
How do you libtards know she was wasn’t detonating a bomb with that phone? Did you forget it was 911????!???
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@slim shady: Right, the only options are beating the kids into submission and the Lord of the Flies.
Wag
@JPL:
I agree that calling the police was over the top, however the girl bears the responsibility. If she had handed over the phone to the AP when asked, she probably would have been given a chance to explain. Then the AP could have called her home ( or mom’s hospital room, if the situation was truly serious), and confirmed the story.
Lots of people acted badly in this situation. But the student was the initiator and accelerator in the reaction.
Amir Khalid
I can see giving the girl a verbal warning, if it was a first offence, and counseling her to check on her mother between classes rather than during them. That said, the incompetence of the school assistant principal, and the clearly needless use of force by the police, is appalling.
By the way, does the HISD in the story stand for Houston Integrated School District? As in, the local education authority has its own police force? If so, why?
drkrick
@Calouste:
I think he’s going to be very surprised at how that goes.
Cervantes
@slim shady:
Can’t speak for your Echo Chamber — but yes, in general, I think anarchist thought ought to be included in the curriculum. A little Kropotkin, some Rudolf Rocker, maybe even a few articles from Freie Arbeiter Stimme, in the original Yiddish for extra credit — whatever it takes to teach kids that mindlessly submitting to authority is bad for their health and everyone else’s.
Not what you meant? I do realize that.
As for this particular kid:
She wasn’t calling the shots. She was trying to call her ailing mother. There is a difference there that perhaps you’ve missed.
Anya
I don’t understand why school administrator was not charged with mischief for calling the police about trivial matters. What law did the student break? My mentally ill clients were regularly charged with mischief wasting police resources when they called the police for being geniuly scared, granted as a result of their delusions.
I don’t understand why is the school (supposed to shape young people’s future) is in cahoots with the security state and going out of their way criminalalizing youth behavior.
FlipYrWhig
The story doesn’t make a lot of sense, though – if she knew she wasn’t allowed to make calls from class, why didn’t she tell the reading teacher she needed to call home and check on her mother?
I doubt that she _needed_ to call home and check on her mother. I also doubt her story about “because I was scared” and “I ended up walking down the stairs.” She was being what we used to call “insubordinate.” That all has a whiff of after-the-fact ret-con by a kid who knows she was doing something wrong, got caught, and reacted badly. Of course, there’s no reason to involve the cops even without a physical confrontation, much less for it to become an actual physical struggle. Kid probably deserved to get a few days’ detention, maybe just a warning if the story about having to check on a sick parent checked out (personally I’m dubious, but I’m an asshole about kids using phones in school).
raven
Uh “Resource Officers” are in the schools already.
brent
@Wag: No. The girl does not bear responsibility for the massive overreaction here. What happened here was not some unavoidable result of uncontrollable forces. The AP is not some programmed compliance bot and the police are not some force of nature like a bunch of wild bears who cannot be prevented from applying maximal force regardless of the circumstance. The ADULTS in this situation bear responsibility for its escalation and its utterly absurd to suggest otherwise.
different-church-lady
@slim shady: It’s always a good day at BJ when both sides of a news story are in the wrong. It means that everyone will be saying something stupid.
Belafon
@slim shady: it’s odd how I managed to get in a comment that is rational and contradicts your statement before you made your comment. It’s almost like you didn’t read anything before you commented.
Betty Cracker
Why call the cops? If she wouldn’t comply with the administrators but was non-violent, why didn’t they suspend her and call her mom or whomever to come after her?
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid: Yes, it has its own police force.
Why? Maybe there’s a need — I have no idea.
But about this incident, one could call the police at 713.842.3715 — not an emergency number.
JR in WV
I grew up in a gritty mining town, with lots of manly bullies, normal 1950s and 60s racial tensions around integrating two mostly racially separate schools into a giant consolidated HS, and I don’t recall ever seeing city cops or deputies in any school. I graduated from HS in 1968.
So now a 70 pound girl gets kneeled on by THREE cops that outweigh her by probably between 2-1 and 3-1 each… cause her mom was sick and she was worried. Girl wasn’t calling her dealer for more smack, she was calling her F/ing MOM. For Dog’s sake, what were these people thinking of?
I guess we really should be glad there weren’t physical injuries, broken bones, perhaps a concussion from hitting the floor too hard. Permanent brain damage from lack of oxygen while she was being subdued. Or Tased to death by the harmless Taser, killer of giant men all over the F;n country, let alone a 70 pound girl.
The girl broke all the rules, so it was all the fault of someone who may not be allowed to drive yet?!? Adults are supposed to think straight in schools, because we know kids don’t know how to think straight yet.
So I’m having a hard time seeing how this remorseless escalation of a cell phone crises is the girl’s fault. Aren’t the teachers responsible for being responsible? That’s not how it always was, but I mean ideally, the teachers are supposed to be responsible and sober thinkers all the time, not mindless implementors of stupid no choice zero tolerance call the cops on this girl talking to her sick Mom !!!
Thanks for seeing this John. Wow, just wow. I’m done here.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes:
She says she was talking to her mother and that her mother has “medical conditions,” but is a bit dodgy about the connection between the two, IMHO. Still there shouldn’t be any cop involvement, much less _rough_ cop involvement.
The Moar You Know
As the spouse of a teacher, I’m totally OK with this. Really.
If that makes me some kind of pariah here, so be it, but goddamn, my wife has to confiscate phones and call in the APs EVERY FUCKING DAY, and then spend hours after school EVERY FUCKING DAY talking to parents outraged that their little special apple got busted for talking to their friends on the phone during class, and it’s really getting old. My wife does not deserve to have to work 14 hours a day every day because some little shitheels and their parents have poor impulse control.
ETA: you got one side of the story. The school cannot legally give you theirs. I guarantee you the police got called right off the bat because this student has caused non-trivial problems in the past when disciplined.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: This.
raven
@Amir Khalid:
raven
@The Moar You Know: Oh my, to the fainting couches.
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
It’s dreadfully complicated. I hear both sides in my work. Schools were given a duty on “safety” that probably exceeds their capability to provide it. They can’t “keep students safe” 100% of the time without some of them taking it to extremes, yet that’s the standard they’re held to. At the same time, they lost a certain amount of discretion on “security” because they put in elaborate safety plans in response to lawmakers freaking out every time there’s a problem and rushing and making bad law.
Now, the truth is some of them hide behind that loss of discretion and ability to make case-by-case judgments because it’s easier and less risky. They’re not making these decisions, they’re just following procedure! Then if something happens they’re safe- they followed the procedure. Those are the poor or cowardly administrators. The better administrators resent the loss of discretion because they (correctly) in my view see it as coming from a lack of trust in their ability to run their schools.
On the other hand! “Discretion” and “judgment” gets complicated too, because there is a fear (justified, sometimes) that CERTAIN students will be treated unfairly unless ALL students are treated exactly the same for each infraction. That’s a “retreat to the rules” that happens too, but that one is well-intended. It’s meant to mitigate bias.
It’s hard. Obviously this is overkill, it’s ridiculous and wrong, but boy, that “safety” standard is tough. I don’t know that they can meet it without huge errors sometimes, and this is one of them.
different-church-lady
@JR in WV:
I remember vividly a handful of incidents where I unknowingly pushed teachers’ buttons as a child — the first time being in first grade, saying something I thought was innocent and getting a very angry, very adult reaction that I could not comprehend as a five year old.
It was only many years later, as a young adult, that it dawned on me that teachers were human beings, with human emotions and human flaws, and that they had lives and frustrations from outside that one classroom.
Children make mistakes. So do adults. The goal would be to have the latter make far fewer that the former. But nobody is perfect at any age.
RSR
@Amir Khalid: School District of Philadelphia has it’s own police force.
I think this is a good idea, and here, the officers are very good at deescalating situations. I believe having the dedicated force they are much better at assessing situations with children and parents and usually avoid the us against them mentality that is often prevalent on the street. They do not carry firearms. City police are called if necessary, and respond to the inter-agency requests quickly.
Unfortunately, the school district’s funding is such shambles that the police force has been cut drastically.
My wife’s school has issues with cell phones, but nothing like this. What happened in Houston is crazy. They knew exactly who this student was, and could have disciplined her for multiple violations of school rules. This was not a law enforcement issue, and calling the police in for a beat down was a failure across multiple levels of decision making.
Tone In DC
The assistant principal or the teacher should have sent the kid home.
A one day suspension. No after school detention, no physical confrontation. And, for damn sure, no cops.
There are some people in this country who have collectively shit their pants, early and often, over the last ten years or so. I don’t care that she was disobedient (insubordinate is the wrong word in this instance, IMHO). A disobedient little girl does not merit even one tenth of all that drama.
Send her home. If not for one day, then for a week. If you truly want to show epic, draconian Zero Tolerance.
And, such as.
Belafon
@The Moar You Know: Actually, the evidence we’ve seen over the last few years has been for schools to call the cops over everything, including a kid eating a grilled cheese sandwich into the shape of a gun.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
It’s made harder by the fact that the kids are aware of these kinds of dilemmas, and some will attempt to take advantage.
Cervantes
@Kay:
How did a “safety” standard come into play here? Do you think the AP or the police felt the child was endangering someone?
raven
@Belafon: Nobody CALLED anyone. They are IN THE SCHOOLS.
different-church-lady
I have a feeling this is going to be one of those threads where I end up learning some things I didn’t know, but I have to learn and then unlearn two dozen wrong things before I get there.
ETA: and I also have a feeling many won’t be taking the journey to completion.
Comrade Dread
I would think that more police officers would be calling for restraint across the country.
The more incidents like this happen, the more the pressure builds and the more large demographics of people start seeing the police as an organization that is making war on them. Keep it up even more and eventually people will stop being afraid of the police and start embracing the idea that they should defend themselves from an overaggressive enemy.
RSR
@raven: Yes, but it appears that the police/resource officers went above and beyond the call of duty here, regarding inappropriate use of a cell phone.
And who exactly took the ‘cell phone video’ in the report, and why weren’t they tackled? This clearly became a case of ‘you didn’t follow our orders, so now you’ll suffer physical consequences.’
Kay
@Cervantes:
I’m completely guessing, but I think they would say that came into play when she took off. She says “walked away” but “walking away” makes it a bigger deal. They’re her custodian while she’s in school. That sometimes turns it around and introduces the element of their duty to keep her safe, contained, whatever. I know that sounds ridiculous given what happened, but that happened after the hand-off to police. That was the error, the teacher who called police, security, “resource officers”, whatever.
You’d also have to know the history between those two people, the teacher and the student. It wouldn’t take away the teacher’s responsibility not to over-react, but it would help to understand it. Also! You’d have to know what the process is within the school. Is that too blunt an instrument? Is it “A, B, C” and then call”? They have their own “codes” essentially, their own set of rules, and they’re always set out somewhere, usually in the handbook no one reads.
burnspbesq
@Calouste:
Excellent news indeed. Burn in hell for all eternity, motherfucker.
raven
@RSR: It ain’t “clearly” shit.
RSR
And if we step back from this incident, we need to consider that more and more schools and districts are trying to figure out how to integrate cell phones into the classroom. They can be great tools for learning, if used appropriately. Calling mom is not one of those uses.
raven
@Kay: What’s wrong with you? What do you want, to know what really happened? Oh no!!!!!
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
Yes, it’s possible the child was misbehaving. She may have misbehaved before; she may even have been lying about who was on the other end of the phone line. She’s a teen-ager: her brain enables her sometimes to do things that most adults have learned to see as inappropriate.
And no, misbehavior should not be ignored — but the specific response seen here is the issue.
And yes, it’s also true, as pointed out above, that conclusions ought to come after the facts are in, not before. Maybe the child really was detonating a bomb with her phone. Maybe she really was a threat to public safety. We shall see.
RSR
@raven: to you, perhaps
different-church-lady
@Cervantes:
Well fuck, now what are we gonna do with the rest of the day?
Someguy
White cops, latina teenager. Yeah, she posed a threat alright… a threat of being uppity.
El Caganer
@raven: Wait for facts? How will this thread ever hit 200+ comments if everybody waits for facts?
Tiny Tim
In my day even major fights between high school students weren’t considered to be call the police events. They were thought to be behavior problems, not crimes, and treated as such. A disobedient kid, even if we assume the most extreme version of disobedience absent actual violence, shouldn’t be grounds to call the cops. It’s nuts.
different-church-lady
@Tiny Tim:
In my day I’m pretty sure the staff was hoping that if they just stepped back and let things take their natural course the students would eventually exterminate each other.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: you just summarized my thoughts perfectly.
rikyrah
her last name’s Perez. THAT is why there were 3 cops….those superhuman ‘others’.
raven
@Tiny Tim: We had a fight at the middle school last week an a bunch of facebook parents in the area were all up in arms. I thought, “be glad a fight is a big deal”.
ruemara
I had to explain to my superlefty DP and my nominally neocon assistant editor who Amadou Diallo is and why he is significant. Even people who feel police are overreaching don’t understand how bad and for how long shit like this is going on.
Cervantes
@The Moar You Know:
That I can understand, sort of.
But if your spouse, the teacher, were “totally OK with this,” where “this” is what the police did to the child, then I might have some questions — and maybe you would, too.
raven
@RSR: Yea, and to a bunch of other people here as well.
RaflW
@El Caganer:
It’s been a long time since H.S., but I can think of some teachers who would’ve practically dialed for her in kindness, and some that would have yelled and said “put that thing away right now.” Most of course would be in between and likely to make some allowance, but it isn’t always easy to get a teacher’s OK.
That said, three cops for a nonviolent sophomore girl? Absurd. A few afternoons of detention, sure, seems reasonable.
RP
Come on…for you lawyers out there, this seems like a classic case of res ipsa loquitor. For you non-lawyers, that means “the thing speaks for itself.” Yes, she might have had discipline problems in the past. Yes, cell phones are a problem in school. Yes, she stupidly escalated the situation. But none of that justifies the use of force here; there was simply no need to throw her to the ground and cuff her.
The Moar You Know
@Calouste: Why is Heaven so hot? And sulfurous?
Mayken
@Wag: are you insane? Wtf are POLICE doing getting involved in a minor disciplinary problem in the first place. There is a serious serious issue when the assistant principals FIRST thought after the student waked away was calling the fucking cops!
raven
@RP: Yes you can “clearly” see her thrown to the ground on the video can’t you?
Kay
@raven:
I hate “zero tolerance” but there was another argument at the time, and it had to do with bias. There was the law ‘n order argument, but there was also this idea that allowing discretion introduces the possibility of bias, and the obvious (and often justified fear) was that kids would be treated differently because of race or class or prestige in the community where the school is located. The problem with that is if there’s bias it can come in at ANY point, for example, the first level, they can show bias in whom they take the next level. “Bias” isn’t just introduced at the level where they ratchet up the response. Here, if there were bias, the teacher could decline to take it to that next level based on some invalid judgment he or she is making (race, class, etc.) In other words, it matters who gets different treatment as far as reporting the infraction, not just at the level of responding to the infraction.
I think they were better off with discretion and judgment calls, but people have to recognize that carries risk TOO.
Cervantes
@Kay: Yes, fair questions — thanks.
RaflW
Oh, and the whole notion of calling the school cops “resource officers” is just awful. I know they have a definition for it, but in common language usage outside schools, WTF does “resource officer” mean? It doesn’t mean shit.
Alternatively, it means school administrations are afraid to call a law enforcement officer what s/he is. I hate this Orwellian crap.
Belafon
@raven: As if that were my point, which was the overreaction to an event.
raven
@Belafon: Sort of catching isn’t it?
srv
@The Moar You Know: Every child needs an exception in the class room.
RP
@raven: I can “clearly” see her on the ground with a knee on her head. How did she get there?
The Moar You Know
@Cervantes: I’ll ask her after she gets home from her 12-hour Friday. She probably wouldn’t have been this morning, but she’ll probably be OK with it then. Another admin/parent meeting. She’s really trying to tough this out for the next few years until retirement but at this point she’s thinking very seriously about just walking away. It would beggar us for retirement (she would lose her entire pension, leaving us with just my meager 401k) but I’d rather have a poor wife who still has some shreds of sanity left. We have a shower curtain rod and I’m sure there are still sparrows around here somewhere. And lots of underpasses.
We’re in a “good” district, BTW. I’d hate to think of what a bad one must be like.
You’re going to get drastic changes to your educational system whether you want them or not, because it is not reasonable to ask teachers to put up with what they have to deal with these days, and they aren’t putting up with it. The old ones are retiring and the young ones leave after an average of five years.
Also, for some who have posted, our district has neither a police force nor “resource officers”. If a kid is trying to leave campus, well, the school is legally responsible for their welfare and the only thing they can do is call the police.
Kay
Okay, and then some of this comes out of “broken windows” theories of policing, which is obviously a bad fit for schools, but that’s the general idea. That’s appealing to a lot of people (including parents) because it goes to their ideas about order and safety and discipline. In my experience low income parents are MORE likely to find this idea appealing, which shouldn’t really be surprising because they have chaotic lives due to their economic status and they want order in schools because they’re afraid their (often ‘good’ kids) are going to get off track.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
So, really, the only possible way to handle student cell phone use is to have three adult men wrestle it away from a 14-year-old girl?
Frankly, from things you’ve said about your wife’s school in the past, she’s stuck with very bad administrators who cave in to the parents at every opportunity. You really think that the parents at your wife’s school wouldn’t demand her resignation if she called the cops on their precious little snowflake and had three adults pile on?
RP
Withholding judgment until all of the facts are in is generally a very good thing. But ignoring obvious facts — like the fact that M. Brown was shot in the head while unarmed — in an effort to shut down discussion is not.
Cervantes
@RP: Right. Discussion and conclusions are not the same thing.
grandpa john
@JR in WV:
This, As a retired high school teacher from before the Cover the ass of administrators zero tolerance crap was initiated and we were expected to be professional and use judgement,You are correct. All this bull crap is simply an extension of the stupidity of zero tolerance. Now you are not supposed to use common sense judgement.
And what the hell is this fee nonsense to get your own possessions back. another money gouging crap policy to gouge the students of more money . I never heard of such nonsense during my teaching career, from 1960 to 1990
Mayken
@Ejoiner: This, all of it, a thousand times.
Kay
@grandpa john:
I agree with most of what you said, but the cell phone thing, broadly, is annoying. Judges take them now. They give them back, but they take them if they go off after they’ve been warned to turn them off. It’s distracting and rude and inconsiderate.
I don’t agree with money fines or rewards in schools, because it’s part of this ridiculous idea that people are only motivated by money.
Mayken
@El Caganer: Again, hello, teenager… but that aside, given the behavior of the administration her, she probably had good reason to believe she would be denied. The old adage easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission comes to mind. (Although in this case I think it was totally wrong.)
mai naem
I have to believe there’s more to this than just that. The cops shouldn’t have done what they did but I don’t see the AP calling the cops unless there’s more. I’m not even sure if I believe the mom had medical issues bit. I would not be surprised if the mom was having some minor acute illness that the daughter is using. BTW, if my teacher asked me to something in class even as a senior in HS I did it. Using the phone to talk in class to your mom is just plain dumb and rude and disrespectful and I would have no problem if the kid was suspended for a week from school. The mom’s an idiot too.
am
@Cervantes:
It’s just basic manners that you pay attention in a classroom and not use a phone. If one needs to check on someone, they ask for permission and excuse themselves. Kids are obviously going to be kids and use them anyway, but allowing that is no way to run a classroom and the teacher is obviously in the right with what they did. Now, when the asst principal is brought in to confiscate something, walking away from them is stupid and like some other person posted, should have been handled by a suspension/detention/expulsion. But I’m not going to fault some poor overworked assistant principal for getting security in that case. The only objectionable thing about in this whole story is inappropriate level of force the police applied here. Every school policy I heard of is something I would want in a school, and the girl is on a very wrong path in life if she thinks her actions were excusable.
Mayken
@Wag: Absolutely agree she did a lot of things wrong here but again, calling the fucking police for just about any school discipline issue outside of violence is insane, I’m also not personally convinced she would have been given a chance to explain and get to call her mother. Doesn’t anyone here remember high school?
srv
@The Moar You Know:
A relative had a run in with a first grader’s grandparent.
Kid came in the next morning and said “Ms. D, grandma wants you to know she’s got a gun” and ambled over to his desk.
Get told a story like this every week I visit, which is often. I keep telling her to do stand-up comedy, her stories are funnier than anything Sedaris does.
grandpa john
@Kay: As a retired teacher, it is great to read your post from someone who understands the situation implications perfectly , but this particular situation should NEVER have escalated to the point of 3 police officers manhandling a student over a cell phone,
Cervantes
@am:
Yes, in general, I agree.
Thanks.
srv
@Amir Khalid:
Lols. Really?
http://www.houstonisd.org/Domain/7973
I’m suprised high schools don’t have SWAT teams.
lethargytartare
@The Moar You Know:
take that onion off your belt and get used to kids having cell phones instead of passing notes.
Kay
@grandpa john:
I agree. I hate when they’re manhandled. It makes me sick to my stomach. I have a middle son who had trouble in school. He finished, but he was in trouble once a month. He’s now grown, and much calmer. If you restrain him, he’ll resist. He operated from the base of his spine or something. That was the deal with him.
They really are different, emotionally and physically. I’ve had them bolt from a courtroom. Sitting next to me one minute, the next minute their chair is knocked back and they are down the stairs and hitting the door. It’s pure panic. I can tell from their breathing when they’re losing it.
grandpa john
@Mayken: Should have had one of the assistant principals that I worked with years ago, ex-marine and football coach, didn’t too many walk away from him.
that’s why he was in charge of discipline.
coin operated
@The Moar You Know:
This. One of my best friends has dual masters in education and psychology and works in the local school district. He gets called in any time there is an ‘incident’ of this nature…he can usually pinpoint which student he’s going to be dealing with by looking at the caller ID and which teacher it’s coming from.
Edited for clarity…
Emma
I went to high school in the 70s. Very working class neighborhood in Chicago, recently integrating Latin and Asian immigrants. Plenty of s_it going down. I saw the cops maybe 6 times in 4 years.
The sheer hatred of teenagers is astounding. I find them annoying myself, but I don’t seem to have forgotten I was once an annoying little shit myself.
And for those of you who immediately decide “if the kid would have obeyed it would never have happened,” good luck in finding independent minds in an indoctrinated population. Teach them to obey immediately and you’ll have the perfect marching moron.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
It wasn’t the teacher calling the cops over, it was the administrator. The teacher sent the kid out of the classroom for violating the cell phone ban and refusing to hand it over.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
You think that the parents at the school Moar’s wife works at are going to make that distinction?
kc
I’m glad the mom’s “medical issues” didn’t prevent her from protesting in front of the school.
grandpa john
@Kay: I can’t say much about cell phones, because thankfully that is one distraction that I never had to deal with during my career., and also I can never recall a time when police had to be called although we did have a stake out one time coordinated with administration and a class rooom teacher to allow a student out of class to catch him breaking into students parked cars
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
Doesn’t matter. If the teacher did everything right, they can scream all they want to have her shitcanned but it won’t ever happen.
Parents scream for teachers to get fired because their precious snowflake got a C in history. Doesn’t mean they get what they want.
The question here in terms of unnecessary escalation comes down on the administrator, not the teacher.
wyrm1
Clearly an overreaction to have cops called or involved. I work in an urban school and deal with cell phones every day, and many students have them out 15 to 20 times per PERIOD. My administration refuses to punish students in any way, so things continue to get worse and worse until a student does something where the police do need to be called. I know my principal is evaluated on metrics like reducing suspensions and other discipline, so clearly there is a disconnect between what we say we want and what we do.
I would love to see schools put cell phone dampers in rooms so that students have no way to chat with others, get calls, etc… but have been told that is impossible
Kay
@grandpa john:
The “discretion” thing is really hard. I agree with that you that turning over discretion to a code can be ass-covering by administrators, but “discretion” itself can be unfair, and you know how that plays out. One kid is treated differently than the other and the accusation is that some bias came in (and that’s TRUE sometimes).
To take it out of the school realm, prosecutors have a lot of discretion and they use their own judgment. We like discretion! Except when prosecutors use that discretion in biased ways, as to charging. Who they charge and what they charge people with. Then we want a code, so everyone gets treated the same!
I read a Rand Paul screed on mandatory sentencing. Okay, I’m generally opposed to that. But he’s delusional. His theory is local judges, those simple and honest yeoman farmers, will apply discretion equally. Except a lot of local judges are petty and vindictive tyrants who treat people differently based on class or race or clout in the community. Discretion isn’t so great anymore. Now I want sentencing guidelines.
I would just say stop arresting so many people and stop using police for everything that looks like a nail. Let’s use some other tools. We’re not idiots. We can come up with something that works better than this.
Frank McCormick
@El Caganer (and others): Let’s repeat, this is 14 year old girl with a parent with a medical condition. “Why wasn’t she a rational actor” might not be the most appropriate question [grin].
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
You’ve probably missed Moar’s previous tales of his wife’s school. She basically gets called on the carpet each and every time there’s a parent complaint and the school administrators always side with the parents. I’m pointing out his wife’s situation, not the situation in the case at hand. Clear now?
The Moar You Know
@wyrm1: It’s actually illegal as hell, unfortunately. Just owning a cell phone blocker in the US is a felony. Which is ridiculous. Every classroom should have one, under the control of the teacher.
FlipYrWhig
@Emma: I guess there’s a thin line between “independent mind” and “little shit who refuses to listen.” Like I said earlier, there’s no reason for the cops to jump this kid. Even little shits refusing to listen, refusing to follow common-sense rules about not talking on your phone during class, who walk away when confronted, all of which piss me off something royal as a person who teaches… even they don’t deserve a beatdown. But I’m not buying “all she was doing was checking on her ailing mom.”
Mnemosyne
@kc:
If the girl wasn’t talking on the phone with her mom, how did her mom know to come down to the school since the administration hadn’t called her?
If you want to talk about crappy parenting instead, we can do that, but people can’t assume on the one hand that the kid is lying about who she was talking to and on the other hand acknowledge that her mom knew to come down to the school without being contacted by the school. At a minimum, it sounds like the girl was telling the truth and she was talking to her mom, which IMO should be a different situation than if she was chatting with one of her friends. Kids don’t really have the option to say, Sorry, Mom, I can’t take your calls when I’m in class.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
As I just said, if she wasn’t talking to her mom, how did her mom know to come down to the school without being contacted by the administrators?
raven
@RP: I don’t know and neither do you.
coin operated
I have to agree with the minority opinion on this one.
Our special snowflake has been in trouble before, and handling her with kid gloves *does not work*. I don’t want our children to be instant conformists…there *should* be times when you can call authority into question…but there comes a time when your non-conformity is more than a mere distraction to the rest of the class (or the school).
My ex was a school psychologist. My best friend is in the same role. Based on my relationship with these people, and hearing what is happening on a day-to-day basis, I’m willing to give you 10-to-1 odds that this girl hasn’t gone quietly into disciplinary situations in the past. Our schools are rife with ‘troubled’ students, and because of skewed usage of the ADA to protect *every* student, they have become the school’s burden. These ‘troubled’ students will push to the absolute boundary and get away with it, because Mommy also understands the limits and will always fight for her little angel no matter how much a distraction he/she has become.
Edited for clarity…
Calouste
@elmo:
Elmo gets it in one.
The Moar You Know
@Frank McCormick: A “medical condition” so serious she protested outside the school all the next day.
Ella in New Mexico
Why anyone is surprised about the outcome of this story amazes me. Texas schools are some of the biggest believers in on- campus police forces. They’ve also bought more of that excess military-grade equipment we’ve all heard about than any school system in the nation.
When you start thinking of your students as “them”, and you surround them with military-swagged police officers everyday, you stop thinking of creative and intelligent ways to discipline students who are misbehaving. You immediately turn to the use of maximum force. What would a school administrator that was forced to actually LEAD rather than just call the cops have done in this situation?
Regardless of whether this kid has been an annoying pain in the ass in the past, NO attempt would have been made on the part of the AP to remove the child’s property when the child refused to hand it over. Child is instead escorted calmly to AP’s office. Child is allowed to call parent to come to school, and when parent arrives, a discussion takes place and the parent either is allowed to take the child home or take the phone home. AP also learns in the process that this young woman in under stress because her mother is ill, is possibly too dependent on her for support, and may need counseling and guidance to help her cope. The child gets lunch detention for a week for disrupting class. The parent is included in the educational setting, and is allowed to participate in discipline decisions in order to reinforce reasonable behaviors at school. Child learns she cannot manipulate all the adults in her world and that consequences that are predictable are out there when we break rules. Win-win-win.
But see, all that would take time, compassion, creative thought, and a simple dedication to the education and development of adolescents. Schools like this see this kid like she’s already a hardened adult prisoner, so why bother?
am
@Kay:
“His theory is local judges, those simple and honest yeoman farmers, will apply discretion equally”
I could read that sentence over and over again and not stop enjoying it for a length of time that, honestly, disturbs me a bit. Just brilliant.
VincentN
It’s interesting how people’s hatred of cell phones and teenagers have overshadowed some common sense here.
So if only the girl had obeyed then this wouldn’t have happened to her? Do you use similar logic when it comes to adults getting tased or shot by cops for non-compliance? Or is this type of punishment reserved only for annoying teens with cell phones?
Weren’t we just discussing the other day how cops need to be trained to de-escalate situations rather than escalate them? These three fully grown men really couldn’t taken more time to talk the girl into handing over the phone? Were they about to miss an appointment for golf or something? Were they in “fear” for their lives?
And even if the girl is a liar and a troublemaker this justifies the use of force how? Unless we discover that she pulled a knife or was about to set off a bomb I don’t see how the cops’ reaction was warranted.
ericblair
@The Moar You Know:
Until it blocks a 911 call, you mean. Then, good luck.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: I would guess that she was, in fact, talking to her mom, but not about Serious Medical Conditions. Probably one of these “When are you coming to get me?” “I need to do some stuff on the way, I might be late” “Aw, c’mon, I’m hungry, do we have any of those pizza rolls left?” kinds of conversations that people have in all public places these days.
The Moar You Know
@Ella in New Mexico: Again, the “child” told the AP to fuck off and walked away. The school is legally 100% on the hook for that child’s welfare. The AP cannot and should not lay hands on the child.
Your move.
FlipYrWhig
@Ella in New Mexico:
I think both mother and daughter seem like codependent boundary-lacking royal pains in the ass. But no one should get beaten up by the cops for that.
VincentN
@The Moar You Know:
Let’s be real. If schools could install cell phone blockers they definitely wouldn’t put them under the control of individual teachers. It’d be too expensive and the administrators would never give teachers that much discretion.
So then when the next school shooting happens and nobody is able to call out because the guy in charge of the blockers is taken out first…
FlipYrWhig
@VincentN: Count the number of people on the thread “justifying the use of force.” Then count the number discussing other aspects of the situation, including how kids and parents conduct themselves in and around schools. I think you’ll find the former is quite a bit smaller than the latter.
VincentN
@The Moar You Know:
Uh, call the parents? And follow the child around to make sure they’re not getting in harm’s way? Maybe only call the cops or “resource officers” as a last resort if it looks like she’s going to leave school grounds?
Yeah, that sounds inconvenient. Let’s tackle her to the ground instead.
demit
@Mnemosyne: “Kids don’t really have the option to say, Sorry, Mom, I can’t take your calls when I’m in class.”
I don’t understand this. It’s been a long time since I was in high school, but is that a thing now? Parents call their children at school and expect them to pick up & chat?
RP
@raven: I can take an educated guess, and that makes a lot more sense than throwing up your hands and saying “who knows?”
VincentN
@FlipYrWhig:
Okay, then I’m talking to the smaller group of people and not the larger group. I’m sorry if that was unclear.
FlipYrWhig
@Ella in New Mexico:
They tried that, and she “ended up” refusing to be escorted anywhere.
FlipYrWhig
@demit: I’m not in a high school but in a college, where the rules are somewhat different, but, yes, it certainly seems to be the case that a lot of parents and children engage in a running, meandering dialogue the whole damn day. A lot of bored emotionally needy kids and even needier, more bored parents out there. They want to be in constant contact and don’t know how to stop.
FlipYrWhig
@VincentN: Thanks… I mostly was saying that in hopes of damping down the Strawman Wars threatening to break out here…
MomSense
I had an incident back in high school where I was on the payphone across from the office. AP came up to me and told me to get off the phone. I didn’t and couldn’t really explain well enough or quickly enough why I needed to be on the phone. He hung up the phone. I left school without permission and went to my dads house. Glad I did. I got in trouble when I went back to school a few days later but the AP felt like an ass when my mom explained that my dad had been at the hospital all night and I hadn’t heard from him and was worried. And by the way I would be missing school for my step mom’s memorial service.
Too many schools are organized around fear and control.
Ella in New Mexico
@The Moar You Know:
Uh, no. But as a parent of four imperfect adolescents who were raised better but have gotten in trouble for breaking minor school rules in the past, if this situation occurred and it was MY beautiful, smart, sassy 75-pound 14 year-old daughter on the floor with a cop’s knee on her head you’d not only have a law suit on your hands, you’d probably have to bail me out of jail for assaulting that fucking son-of-a-bitch. I hold my kids accountable and apply reasonable discipline but you lay a hand on one of them for something stupid like using a cell phone in class and I’ll go to the mat to defend them.
And by the way, as much as I have sung the praises of my kids teachers and administrators over the years (and I really do, so many of them have been Godsends) and told them just how much I appreciate them, the ones that hated their students enough to refer to them as “little shitheels” needed to retire, or go find jobs that didn’t take so much out of their souls. Education: It’s a tough job, but if you’re not up to doing it right, then don’t do it at all.
raven
@RP: Clearly
kc
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, leaping out of her sick bed …
Ella in New Mexico
@FlipYrWhig:
@The Moar You Know:
No, AP demanded child hand over her property several times, escalating situation, tried to take it from her forcibly which then led child to try and evade AP. Which lead AP to feel forced to call the cops who then had only one tool in their arsenal: full assault and take down.
If AP had requested phone only, then said “ok let’s go to my office and we’ll call your Mom” I doubt this would have gone to the extremes it did. If kid left campus, then so be it, it’s not worth physically assaulting a non-violent offender.
Seriously, every single violation of a rule does not need to escalate to a fucking school shooting level response.
Cervantes
@kc: Me, too, actually.
Suzanne
Wow. I’m a bit surprised at the hate of SROs. But when I was in high school, we had an enormous riot due to racial tension. A girl who attended my high school was found dead in a dumpster last year. My daughter’s elementary school had a kid kidnapped out of the parking lot last year. And her middle school had a kid hang himself in the gym. Her SRO seems to be a good guy. If I was a teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to deal with breaking up a fight. Fuck that. I understand that calling cops on a bratty girl is beyond the pale, but things can and do happen in schools, and having some police around can be a good thing, IMHO.
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
I thought it was Moar referring to the kids as “lil’ shitheels”.
kc
@Ella in New Mexico:
Where are you getting that the AP tried to take the phone from her “forcibly?” Thars not what I read. Please cite your source for this.
blueskies
@Wag: Godammned but you’re jackass. The school administrators, the police, THE ADULTS, bear responsibility for how they react to a teenager being a teenager. Judas priest, how obtuse can you be?
kc
@VincentN:
Follow the child around all afternoon. lol.
The Moar You Know
@Ella in New Mexico: Want to make very clear that’s my words, not my wife’s. I frankly resent that the only time I see my wife is when she tumbles into bed, exhausted, after another day of dealing with hyperreactive parents who are obviously spoiling for a fight, usually just to relieve the tedium of their boring lives. I’m not impressed with the kids, get pissed at the troublemakers, but they are just following the example their parents set. This generation – my generation (thank FSM we don’t have kids) of parents are truly awful.
As I stated upthread, you’ll get that wish. In about ten years there will be no more career teachers. And then you can kiss your public schools goodbye shortly after. Charters or private, whatever you can pay for. And nobody is going to like the charters staffed by teachers with two years experience who are already looking for their next career.
blueskies
@The Moar You Know: Yeah, dammit! So let’s call the cops on them!
Maybe your wife needs to get a different job. You know, one that doesn’t upset you so much.
Kay
@Ella in New Mexico:
The excessive use of force by police is a separate issue than the infraction or the school response (except where they intersect; the school calling security).
I do think you have to recognize that they have to satisfy sometimes competing interests. For every parent that wants a half day spent on whether her cell phone use is justified, there are a large group of parents who want disruptive students removed immediately because their kid isn’t disruptive and that kid has a right to an orderly class where they can get some work done.
The second group is larger than the first. Much larger.
raven
@blueskies: Just for the record, you are full of shit.
Ella in New Mexico
@FlipYrWhig:
Clearly you have not had exposure to the level of dysfunction going on in many families today. I’ve had kids this age sitting next to their mom’s beds in the CCU watching her dying of breast cancer because the kid was the only caregiver who spoke English and could translate for her. I’ve also known kids this age with parent’s who are drug and alcohol addicted. One I fostered had her mother calling her in the middle of 9th grade English class to come pick her up from jail.
Seriously, don’t assume you know what kind of life the kid is living.
BobfromSanLuis
Three police officers to subdue a 70 pound teenager? In the video, one of the officers is shown standing over the other two, but still, two grown, adult, law enforcement officers to pin down this waif?
Why don’t more law enforcement agencies better train their officers how to properly subdue suspects? One officer, with the correct training, would be able to control any suspect, regardless of how large or small they are, what sort of drugs they could be on, and do it in such a manner that no one actually gets hurt. A knee on her head? Really? Idiots.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I wouldn’t be surprised, but I can also tell you that a 14-year-old does not have the power to hang up on her mother if her mother calls at an inappropriate time. That leads you into a world of shit that makes having three grown men wrestle you to the ground seem like the better option.
@kc:
So we should be training kids to obey the authorities rather than their parents? Yeah, there’s no way that could possibly go wrong.
Ella in New Mexico
@Kay: And Kay, I agree. I just think that thoughtful, intelligent and well-trained educational professionals can accomplish that without the pressing of a child’s head to the floor and handcuffs.
I’ve done more to talk down violent, paranoid schizophrenics that weighed 200lbs who were attempting to escape the hospital than these assholes even attempted to do with this girl.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: His maker is in Hell, so he’s going to the correct place.
Ella in New Mexico
@kc: the child’s interview in the video
grandpa john
@Kay:
Well yes we should and I agree, , but most of the time when I read about ridiculous and over reacting responses, it involves an unreasonable reaction to an unusual incident. like a 6 year old suspended from school for bringing a table knife and or an aspirin or some such. in out of ordinary cases judgement and reason are required not zero tolerance. unusual circumstances require unusual solutions and some common sense the first reaction should not be calling the cops.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Actually, I’m guessing that the parents who don’t want the classroom disrupted by other students don’t see anything wrong if they interrupt class by calling their child. Because they’re calling about something important, unlike the other students’ parents who are just being annoying.
I really think a lot of people here don’t realize that these kids have cell phones because the parents want to be able to contact the kids at any time, even during class, and the parents often do.
raven
@Ella in New Mexico:
Seriously, don’t assume you know what kind of life the kid is living.
But you get to, right?
FlipYrWhig
@Ella in New Mexico: You’re giving a VERY generous reading to this part of the story, IMHO:
I read that and think, OK, what happened was that the AP told her to hand over the phone, the kid wouldn’t, the AP started yelling, the kid walked away and put some distance between herself and the AP, and then the school cops showed up. I immediately tune out “because I was scared” and “I ended up walking down the stairs.” I swap in for them “because it was my phone” and “I turned my back on the AP and started walking because she can’t tell me what to do.” Maybe I’m wrong. But that would fit a bit better with the way events unfolded from there.
Mnemosyne
@Ella in New Mexico:
Yep. Kids aren’t necessarily going to tell school administrators or teachers if shit is going down at home — especially when it sounds like said administrators are power-tripping assholes — so it’s possible that her “discipline problem” is a “crazy mom problem.” Which, needless to say, is not going to be solved by having three cops wrestle her cell phone away from her when her mom calls.
FlipYrWhig
@Ella in New Mexico: You’re right, I shouldn’t assume I know the background. But my strong suspicion is that the background is that she and Mom shoot the shit all day because Mom thinks that’s good parenting. I’ll feel bad if I’m wrong.
Ella in New Mexico
@VincentN:
I think it’s more like people’s hatred of teenagers doing anything.
Exactly. It’s all about training, mindset and the deep desire to teach and provide leadership, not just accomplish the task of 100% compliance in every situation, no matter how trivial.
demit
@FlipYrWhig: Well, college is a bit different, isn’t it? I remember getting to college & being blown away when I learned I could smoke right there in school! (It was a long time ago.)
Another thing that struck me about this incident is that high school periods are 40 or 45 minutes long. It’s not unreasonable to expect students to make/take phone calls between classes. There’s a time and a place for everything. But the zeitgeist these days seems to be “what I want to do is very important and it takes precedence over anyone or anything else around me.”
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
You’re assuming that a 14-year-old girl reacts the same logical way an adult would react. This is how I can tell you’ve never been a 14-year-old girl. ;-)
Having been one myself, I find it perfectly plausible that she would freak out, overreact, and try to run away rather than calmly handing the phone over.
ETA: And it’s not being a jerk on purpose and feeling entitled. It’s “OMG YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS I HATE YOU!!” Or, in other words, being 14 years old.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s almost as though you’re against BJ’s entire raison d’etre!
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: But even if getting her off the phone doesn’t help this girl specifically, because her mom’s crazy or for some other reason, it certainly helps everyone else who’s trying to pay attention. If mom is instigating bad behavior in her kid, the school needs to take the phone away, because they have to protect everyone’s right to an education, free of yap yap.
Ella in New Mexico
@The Moar You Know:
Of course, reading back I see that. You obviously are a wonderful husband and empathetic defender of your wife’s tough, tough job and I applaud you for that. My own hubby hears some of my stories as an RN and I’m sure his description of my work can sound less than positive–he gets angry about how we are treated by patients, their families and by administrators alike.
But I love my job, and every day I dedicate myself to doing it well, with a dedication to great nursing care, holding a clear heart and maintaining empathy for my patients, regardless of my lack of resources. The day I can’t do that is the day I move on.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: What’s really important is that we all continue to take wild guesses.
Gordon
My children attend a school where there was a school shooting incident (it’s a couple of years old, but still a fresh wound to those of us who live here, and especially the families of the children who died) School is closed today because the messed up kid who did the shooting escaped from jail yesterday for a few hours. But the thing is, when the incident went down, kids with cell phones were able to contact their families, and we all knew that our children were okay (except for the ones who weren’t) fairly quickly.
As a consequence of the shooting and the difficult and prolonged healing process, the school actually has fairly relaxed enforcement of cell phone policy, relative to what they used Kids should not be using them to cheat on tests (duh) and they should not be texting or talking while in class – but as in the adult world, sometimes you need to take a call or read a text, and being able to do that when you have legitimate outside concerns means you can pay more undistracted attention to the business at hand.
Svensker
@Wag:
The student is a kid. Kids do dumb stuff. That’s why they’re in situations with supposed adults who are supposedly in charge. If refusing to hand over a cell phone results in adults calling the cops on a kid, I woulda had Patton’s entire army down on my head when I was in high school. Jeez.
feral1
I’m a former teacher. For most of my teaching career I worked with middle school age special kids with emotional/behavioral issues in Baltimore. In that role I received training on student restraint and was involved in restraining students multiple times as a part of a team.
I have a few thoughts about this case. First, from the facts presented in the story we simply can’t determine whether the response was appropriate. However, I’m going to speculate on what was a likely scenario.
The girl used her phone in class when she wasn’t supposed to. The teacher sent her out in to the hall. The VP encountered her in the hall and told her to hand over the phone. The girl refused. The girl walked away from the VP and would not follow her directions to stop or come to the office. The police were already in the building. The VP contacted the police (probably by walkie talkie) and told them there was a student wandering the halls and refusing to follow directions. They responded. They told her to give them the phone. She refused. They put their hands on her to escort her to the office. She resisted. They put her on the floor to restrain and cuff her.
It is certainly possible that the VP escalated the situation by being overly emotional or aggressive with the way she interacted with the girl. I always made it point to maintain a neutral/calm affect in these kinds of confrontations, because kids (and all people really) react to anger/emotion by escalating. However, we don’t know that. At the point the girl walked away from the VP it was perfectly appropriate for the VP to call the police, especially if they were already in the building and that was the established protocol for dealing with students wandering the halls and refusing to follow directions. One student roaming the halls in a school who will not respond to directions can quickly cause chaos and that is a safety issue.
Also, criticism on the number of police officers used to restrain the girl is misdirected. My training on, and experience with, student restraint, taught me that it is much safer for the student (and the staff) to have multiple people involved. We usually had at least four people responding when restraint was required.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
And that works right up to the time where there is a genuine emergency and the parent can’t reach their kid and then ALL of the parents freak out because what if that was them?
I agree that the school needs a new policy, but it needs to take into account that some parents are entitled assholes and some of them are just f’ing crazy and don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to call their kid anytime they want.
Unless it was the teacher who called the assistant principal, it sounds like the teacher handled it correctly — she sent the student out into the hallway to take the call so she wouldn’t disturb the rest of the class. Assuming the facts we have are correct, it was the assistant principal who overreacted and caused the problem.
Ella in New Mexico
@raven:
No, I’m saying we really have no idea just what kind of dynamics this kid or any children may be experiencing when they act out. My kids got in minor troubles, and because we are connected and involved parents who hold them accountable, they would never have tried to do what this kid did–they would have (and at least on did) handed the phone over to the AP.
But just because teenagers can appear to be normal, everyday brats on the outside doesn’t mean there’s not something going on at home or in their heads that is a reasonable explanation for their behaviors.
I thought that’s why we in the helping professions all take Developmental Psychology–to remind us that kids are IN DEVELOPMENT and that sometimes they need our help? Educational professionals supposedly go into the work to help kids grow and develop, not because they want to make widgets or program computers that don’t talk back to you.
raven
Oh boy this will be a click generator!
raven
@Ella in New Mexico: And I’m saying there is a whole lot about this that we don’t know. The worst may be true and, then again, it may not.
Mnemosyne
@feral1:
Can you accept that maybe your experience dealing with students with diagnosed emotional or behavioral problems might not be applicable to the general population of students?
Honestly, that’s part of the problem we’re having with cops right now — they’re automatically assuming that everyone they encounter is a criminal who needs to be kept under control, which is how you end up with people with concussions being shot to death.
FlipYrWhig
@feral1: This rings true to me. I can get/identify with being freaked out when the cops descend on you when you haven’t done anything significantly wrong, and trying to get away rather than complying. The part I don’t believe is the attempt to say she didn’t turn over the phone to the asst. principal “because I was scared,” and the reason I think there’s a confabulation going on is the “I ended up walking down the stairs” bit. Come on, she didn’t “end up” walking down the stairs, she just up and walked down the stairs. To be clear, I have no problem with the notion that force was excessive. Looks pretty clearly excessive. But the way I interpret her actions in the middle of the story puts me in a mental place where I relate to the teacher and asst. principal more than to the kid or the mother. But not the cops.
lethargytartare
@The Moar You Know:
this has probably been said every 20 years for about 10,000 years.
can you gimme 5 bees for a quarter?
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
Very well put!
grandpa john
@Ella in New Mexico: Wow ! a practical non-confrontational yet simple solution, unfortunately in the world of modern education such solutions are not the first choice. You must be or have been a class room teacher to be able to see through all the administrative red tape and policy books to be able to clearly see such an easy solution
Sad_Dem
@The Moar You Know: This. The writing has been on the walls for years.
Ella in New Mexico
@FlipYrWhig:
Exactly. There are some really sad examples of parents out there.
It’s amazing how much compassion and love I can feel towards teenagers now that I’ve raised four, particularly the ones who don’t have decent, loving and mentally healthy parents in their lives. It breaks my heart to know they don’t have the luxury of the kind of safety and care and stability they deserve. They’re gonna be problems in school for teachers needing kids to be more “Leave It to Beaver” than “8 Mile” types.
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
According to the linked story the AP did not actually try to forcibly take the phone from her. The AP demanded the phone and the kid refused and then took off. Which makes sense as the AP is not supposed to lay hands on the kids.
As to the kid leaving campus, again the school is legally responsible for the kid’s safety and well-being, so letting the kid bolt is totally out of the question.
Ella in New Mexico
@grandpa john: In my first career I counseled domestic violence victims and offenders. Now I’m a nurse. But being a parent of four who gave a crap and tried to balance my kids needs with the reasonable demands of teachers and our schools, I found that the more “reasonable approach” works the best. ;-)
Lost Left Coaster
@Wag: This is snark, right? Or are we so broken that we can’t imagine a peaceful solution of the minor infraction of using a cellphone in class? I could suggest some — assistant principal says, for example, that you get after school detention until you comply with the cellphone policy. The police should have been involved in this at all exactly zero. If the police are to start enforcing regular student discipline, then they should be out of the schools altogether.
Emma
@FlipYrWhig: I’m not buying it either! I only know what I see. It could be this kid is trouble, in all caps. But… when it becomes acceptable to have three adult males wrestle a teenaged female to the ground as a “disciplinary” measure, we have a problem way more difficult than school discipline.
grandpa john
@MomSense:
Yes and in doing so they have forgotten all about what their objective is supposed to be. One thing I have that I don’t know how many others here may have, I spent 28 years of my life as a high school classroom teacher. One thing I learned early on in my career, every student that passed through my class was an individual. each one had a different personality, a different home life, a different goal in life. and any school that tries to treat them as all the same , will fail. I also discovered that fear and control are not nearly as effective teaching tools as respect is.
Amir Khalid
@raven:
For evacuating a school because of a natural disaster or hostage situation, plain old school buses would work just fine, along with ambulances for any wounded kids — unless you need to drive the kids to safety through streets planted with mines. Which, from what I remember of San Diego, seldom happens there.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
It’s kind of a ruse, though, since the AP has the full power to call the campus cops and have them lay hands on the kids, which means that the AP can order physical discipline without having to get her own hands dirty.
Farming out the dirty work to other people doesn’t mean the AP isn’t responsible for the dirty work.
Ella in New Mexico
@chopper: It’s all how the AP approached the situation which escalated the issue.
Start at the beginning, while she is in the hallway, talking on the phone. Maybe approach the kid with a solution orientation, before the Nazi-like demand to hand over her property without knowing the situation. Maybe open the door and have the teacher come out into the hall and discuss the situation. Go back to before the kid starts to freak out when she realizes she faces a fine (maybe unaffordable? even if she has a phone she might have no money in the near future to pay the fee) and the idea that she might not be able to communicate with the “sick parent” for the next 24 hours, before she then has a disconnect of the frontal lobe from the amygdala and attempts to evade the stinky breath of the Assistant Principal in her face.
Go back to the beginning where you approach the kid calmly, and when she seems resistant, use psychologeee.
Back way up. ;-)
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
No, in my experience there’s a huge group of parents who want a lot of order in schools. Their children don’t disrupt the class because most children don’t disrupt the class. My eldest son was a really good student and he dislikes chaos and conflict. To him, the interruptions are incredibly boring because he’s been dealing with what he considers bullshit when people won’t follow simple rules since kindergarten. My middle son was occasionally the disrupter. Public schools have to do well by both those people.
Some kids take more time, but there is a real question about allocating time and resources and fairness because the kids who don’t need that attention could use the adult to help them too, in a different direction. She has 30 kids in there. 29 of them aren’t on a cell phone. So how much time does she devote to the one who is?
feral1
@Mnemosyne: I think my experience dealing with children who have diagnosed emotional/behavioral issues is extremely applicable to dealing with the general student population. First, the general student population has many, many students with un-diagnosed emotional/behavior issues. Second, my experience taught me to deal with all students with empathy, understanding, and kindness. However, it is also important to have clear rules and consequences. I have seen first hand what schools look like when students are able to openly defy the staff and there are no “resource officers” or “teams” to call upon. Schools like this are hell for the students and the staff. It’s really hard to over state how awful (and dangerous) it is to go to school or work in an environment like that.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@raven: She wasn’t. She was pointing out that there are other possibilities. Are you always a troll, or is it just the subject matter that makes you act like an ass?
grandpa john
@Ella in New Mexico: wow I just keep on sending you praises and marvel at the insight in your posts. You have it right, I spent 28 years dealing with students in the classroom, If I didn’t have some empathy and care for their futures, no way I could have stayed that long. the secret to teaching is not to have them fear you, but respect you.
John N
So weird. So the kid used a cell phone, who cares? Let her leave the school for the day, or for the rest of her life, if that’s what she wants. All of the arguments about who is right or wrong are absurd. Nothing was even happening, until the police got involved. Some kid using a cell phone, even in contravention of school policy, is not a “thing” that warrants any kind of attention from anyone. So this school’s policy is stupid.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: Maybe she didn’t want them seeing who was on that call, or a previous call, she had made?
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
we don’t know how it went down. maybe the AP was all ‘first give me the phone, then we’ll go to the office and figure this out’. maybe instead the AP is a notorious shouty asshole.
Paul in KY
@Lost Left Coaster: The child must still hand over the cell phone, though.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: Back in my day, one of the AP’s main missions was laying hands on the students.
That’s why we loved them so much.
Ella in New Mexico
Question: Doesn’t the fact that since pretty much all of us can laugh at the video below mean that this girl’s whole situation was ramped up WAAAAY out of proportion?
http://www.theonion.com/video/braindead-teen-only-capable-of-rolling-eyes-and-te,27225/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:NA:InFocus
Ella in New Mexico
@grandpa john: I so agree. Teachers like you were so incredibly good for my kids. You taught them the small lessons in life that the Geometry or the conjugation never will. How to conduct yourself like a civil, reasonable adult. Thank you!!!! :-)
grandpa john
@Suzanne: well of course they have their place and use, the problem with many such resources is that the people in authority over them seem not to be cognizant of how to administer the application of these resources appropriately
The Moar You Know
@John N: Personally I could not agree more. Legally that is absolutely not an option.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
From what I can tell from the story, though, the teacher handled it correctly: she sent the student out into the hallway so she wouldn’t disturb the rest of the class. It was the assistant principal who caused the problem by confronting the student and having her chased down and tackled by the campus police so they could take the phone away from her. I have a feeling that having that happen was much more disruptive to the other students than having one student in the hallway on her cell phone.
Lost Left Coaster
@ericblair: Yes in a school shooting situation I’m pretty sure that everyone will want all the cellphones working.
Suzanne
@John N: Um, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. If fourteen-year-olds were capable of making mature decisions about what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives, they could then go to work. Child labor ahoy!
Having a conversation in class, on a phone or not, is disruptive to everyone else. It’s douchey. The school is well within bounds to tell her to turn it over until the end of the day.
@Ella in New Mexico: Nazi-like? REALLY? The Nazis killed thirteen million people. The AP asked her to turn in her phone until the end of the day. Totes the same.
Mnemosyne
@feral1:
So all kids should be treated as though they have autism with violent features until proven otherwise?
Yes, nothing says “empathy, understanding, and kindness” like having three cops wrestle a girl to the floor over her cell phone.
Yes, that girl really looked like a serious physical threat to everyone around her. I’m sure she could have kicked a dent into a locker if she’d worked at it for a while.
Sorry, but I really think your experiences have led you to act as though every child you encounter is going to have serious behavior problems that require physical restraint, just like every cop who encounters a citizen is going to act as though that citizen is a dangerous criminal. And the techniques that you use on those children with serious behavior problems are not going to work on normal children. In fact, they’re just going to make matters worse.
Ella in New Mexico
@raven:
Well, then why not assume the worst and the best at the same time? I guess I’d start with the bias that most teenagers in my school are not crazy, have reasonable explanations for what they are doing, and that they don’t deserve to be body slammed when I want them to do something else?
Oh, and hey–how about I try to create an environment where I get to know as many of the kids as possible so that when I DO have to confront them, we actually have some kind of previous relationship in which I’m the good guy?
Lost Left Coaster
@Paul in KY: Well no shit, but guess what? I’m willing to stop short of full bodily force that traumatized her and put her health at risk over this.
The problem here is the demand for instant compliance. That’s all the police, and a lot of their authoritarian supporters here, want. They want instant compliance. Anything less and you’re disrespecting your better and deserve to be punished on the spot by a physical attack by people vastly bigger than her.
Check out this super radical idea: if she won’t give up her cellphone, then her mom has to be called, has to pick her up, and they have a meeting with the assistant principal. If she continues to break the cellphone rule, then she has to sign a behavioral contract that disallows her to carry one on her person, at school, during school hours, or check it in the office, or something. There’s so many possible solutions here. But the problem is, for many commenters here, that they don’t deliver instant compliance. This small Latina teenager wouldn’t be instantaneously put in her place. And that’s what these people really want. Instant gratification.
Ella in New Mexico
@The Moar You Know:
Not in all locales. Many campuses are “open” nowdays, with kids allowed to come or leave pretty much at will. My kids could leave to go to classes at the U, or come home when they only had morning and pm classes. Of course it’s different elsewhere.
This also raises the question of why we are on one hand, expecting kids to manage so much freedom and self determination in high school for some things, but we’re willing to take them down for using a cell phone in class on the other.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Are they well within their bounds to have three adults wrestle a 14-year-old to the ground over the cell phone? I’m sure that if that happened to Spawn, you would be A-OK with that and tell her that she should always listen to adults in authority, right?
Because, honestly, this is what people are starting to argue now: not that this was a discipline problem, not that it was acceptable for the AP to ask for the cell phone, but that it was perfectly acceptable to have three adults physically restrain the girl to take the phone away from her, like it was a fucking gun.
grandpa john
@raven: well she probably can and I know that I can. As I have mentioned several times in this thread, I spent 28 years of my life in classrooms with them and I sure as hell know what kind of life some of them lived and for some of them it was pure hell. I see some of them around town or read about them in the paper and smile at the success story of how they managed to even survive much less be where they are today,
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
Of course, you could also start with the assumption that the AP actually tried to take this situation calmly and properly, rather than immediately screaming like a nazi fascist with ‘stink breath’.
Lotsa assumptions being made here.
Mnemosyne
@Lost Left Coaster:
Ding ding ding. I don’t think anyone is arguing that it was just fine for the kid to be using her cell phone in class (though as I said above, if it was her mom she was talking to, the poor kid is going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place), but then we get to the question of what should have been done about it, and way too many people seem to think it was okay for three cops to wrestle her to the floor and disarm her from using her cell phone.
There is — or should be — a whole range of tactics between not saying anything and physically restraining someone, but it seems as though schools and police are going straight to physical restraint without trying anything else, which is how we end up with six-year-olds being hauled to the police station in handcuffs.
Ella in New Mexico
@Suzanne:
OMG not the Godwin’s charge, please let’s not go there…. it was a turn of the phrase, as in the image of a “Nazi” demanding papers and total compliance with no questions asked under penalty of force.
I guess I should have use a lower-case “n”. Ok, how about “Prison Guard-like”? :-)
feral1
@Mnemosyne: Not going to engage with you further because you’ve quickly moved to the extreme strawman tactic.
Ella in New Mexico
@chopper: Ok, truce.
You can come down on the side of the AP and the escalation of force.
I’ll come down on the side that it probably was not necessary.
MomSense
Three police officers wrestling a student to the ground over a cell phone is excessive. That this student is a tiny female makes it all the more ridiculous.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I absolutely do not think force should have been used in this case. I don’t think having multiple adults around to witness her behavior was a bad idea, though. If anyone used physical force against my kid, I would raise hell.
However, this girl sounds like she’s been a huge disruption to the educational mission of that school, and I am all in favor of having her be suspended or in detention, and I think taking the phone away until the end of the day is reasonable. A student who is openly defiant to reasonable authority needs discipline.
grandpa john
@demit: maybe in some places, but in my years teaching our classes were 55 minutes with 4 minutes between classes and my college classes were 50 minutes with 10 minutes between classes. of course my college time was mid to late 50’s and my granddaughter tell me it is now much different. Hell they don’t even have the thrill of trying to avoid Saturday morning classes like we did.
Paul in KY
@Lost Left Coaster: Your post left it somewhat ambiguous as to what would happen to the call phone. I am fine with what you said in your post that I am replying to, however, you can’t have the kid in detention for refusing to hand over the cell phone, still with the cell phone. That way lies chaos.
Mnemosyne
@feral1:
I don’t think it’s a strawman to point out that normal children don’t respond well to the same techniques you use on emotionally disturbed children, but obviously I’m never going to convince you otherwise, so that’s my final word on it.
Bill
Unfortunate that the author, and apparently the editors, if there were any, didn’t know the meaning of the phrase “in lieu of”.
am
@Lost Left Coaster:
The police were not called out, it appears they were effectively school security and were always present. I think everyone also agrees this should never escalate to the point it should, but I think there is a lot of disagreement around what the obligations of the student were. And I personally have very little sympathy for her actions, and increasingly don’t think this is something I have time to be outraged over compared to far more important things like Michael Brown or John Crawford – real cases of police corruption and criminality.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: You should never need 3 adult males to manhandle one small female.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
And that’s what this girl’s family is doing — raising hell because physical force was used. So the problem is … ?
Ella in New Mexico
@Lost Left Coaster:
@Mnemosyne:
THIS THIS THIS!!! They don’t–won’t–take the time to do things right because someone told them that compliance in the quickest fashion is of the essence! Not education and discipline.
feral1
If the police or the VP tried to physically take the cell phone from her and this escalated the situation to where they restrained her, that is wrong. If the girl refused their directions to come with them to the office and tried to walk away from them then it was appropriate to physically escort her.
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
pointing out that we don’t necessarily know that the AP was an out-of-the-gate asshole here, and for all we know approached the situation exactly as you yourself would have wanted, does not somehow put me on the ‘side’ of escalating force by the cops or that it was in any way necessary. it’s merely pointing out that we don’t know. Maybe he was a nazi asshole with ‘stink breath’ being a dick because that’s what he does. Maybe not.
Unfortunately when a kid turns and runs the situation becomes much more difficult. You certainly can’t let a kid leave the building.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: How do you relieve her of her phone if she ain’t giving it up?
I think having the parent come & making them get it from her is a much wiser course of action than what they did. If the mom won’t do it, then the child is suspended for some period of time.
Ella in New Mexico
@demit:
Not necessarily. This year, in order to meet some arbitrary idea of how many actual minutes are spent on classroom teaching, our schools reduced the passing times between our kids classes to a little over two minutes. This, in a tightly jammed school of 2300 students.
Kids are complaining and parents are outraged right now because it has gotten to the point they cannot go to the rest room or make a phone call without being late to their next class. And Administration has apparently taken away the teacher’s right to use discretion in deciding whether to let a kid be late–they’re supposed to lock the classroom and the kid is supposed to go voluntarily turn themselves in at the office and get instant lunch detention.
How many of those kids do you suppose instead just walk the fuck off campus and just go home or somewhere else? I know mine did. When you gotta pee, you gotta pee.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
So if they’re preventing the kid from leaving the building, then it’s okay to have three cops hold the kid down?
That’s kind of the problem here: by saying things like you can’t let a kid leave the building, you’re saying that what the cops did to prevent her from leaving the building was okay.
Ella in New Mexico
@chopper:
I disagree, for the reasons I stated above. @Ella in New Mexico:
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: My objection is to the notion seemingly held by some commenters here that SROs invariably lead to some police state, when the majority of them are improving the educational mission of schools. I object to the idea, also seemingly held here, that a kid being disruptive in class is no big deal. I also object to the suggestion that taking away her phone until the end of the day is the action of Nazis and authoritarians with bad breath.
There was room for nuance here.
Lost Left Coaster
@Paul in KY: You’re right. That’s why I think if she truly wouldn’t give it up, even after calming down, it’s time to call her mom (it probably is anyway) and call it a day for her. Send her home. But you can’t remove it from her by force. Which I realize now isn’t necessarily what you were arguing in favor of.
grandpa john
@Ella in New Mexico: yes reasonable approaches work best, but can we really expect teenagers to always be reasonable when we live in a country where one whole political party is based on being unreasonable and over half the states governments are governed on the principle of
unreasonableness
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
Therein lies a big problem; if the school is required to keep kids safely in the building and a kid is determined to bolt, what does the school do? I guess one of the cops could try standing in front of one of the doors, however useful that may be. not too likely, my middle school had a whole line of ’em.
Lost Left Coaster
@Suzanne: Yeah there is room for “nuance.” Don’t involve the police. Punish the student appropriately. Take the phone away. Give her after school detention. There are plenty of other nonviolent options. I haven’t seen much in the way of comments acting like school cellphone policies shouldn’t be enforced. But given that she is 14, I am still baffled by all the people who want to do an exegesis of her actions here. Yeah, sounds like she was being a brat. She was being disruptive. I can remember a time not so long ago when that didn’t result in police violence. And I guess I can remember being 14. They get emotional and upset (don’t we all) and overreact sometimes and, ideally, and I know this is mind-blowing, but ideally you would have school administrators who understood that and could handle that and if they can’t get instant gratification from the student (“give me the phone!”) then they have to pursue a calmer path that will still result in the student getting disciplined. Is that nuanced?
Suzanne
@Paul in KY: I think they should have suspended her until she gave it up. But suspensions can be hard on working-class families.
different-church-lady
@Ella in New Mexico: It’s always surprising when someone points out that Nazis were actual things and not just turns of phrase, eh?
cckids
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree as well. (late tho I am) It is an Animal Farm situation, where all sides are wrong but some sides are more wrong than others.
To me, it looks like Ferguson writ small. A situation that didn’t need to be a big deal was escalated quickly & needlessly into an EVENT. The Asst. Principal should have some notion of how to discipline kids, especially about cell phones, that doesn’t involve calling in a use of force.
Teens will usually, if given the chance, talk; if only to justify their own actions. That gives the authority person the chance to defuse & enforce the rules. The fact that the girl was Latina probably does play a part – I am more than sure there are snotty white rich kids who aren’t chased down & lose their phones for offending.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
Obviously, the only possible answer is to have three adults pin her to the ground. They had no other choice, really.
Suzanne
@Lost Left Coaster: Yeah, I think that’s nuanced. I don’t think having an SRO engaged is quite as ominous as “getting the police involved” makes it sound, but I agree with you on everything else you said.
feral1
@Lost Left Coaster: What should the staff do if a student refuses directions to come with them to the office?
cckids
@chopper:
Schools here in Vegas let the kid go, call the parents/guardians, and handle with a suspension/whatever when the kid shows back up. If it is an ongoing issue, they send a truant officer to the house.
Of course, those poor souls sometimes deal with the kind of parents who value school so little that they’ll excuse an absence because “her boyfriend was in town and she was up really late”. No, I’m not kidding. Said in the same tone you’d use to say “her grandmother died & we are attending the funeral”.
Steeplejack
@wyrm1:
I have been wondering the same thing. If ever there was a perfect application for it—and a perfectly defensible one—this is it.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I would need to see a little more evidence of that, because so far the majority of the stories I hear are of them overreacting to extremely minor “threats,” like a kid refusing to hand over her cell phone.
She was not in class. She was in the hallway, where the teacher sent her to prevent her from disrupting the class.
I have a feeling that having her chased screaming through the hallways and pinned down by three cops was a little more disruptive to the class than having her stand in the hallway with her cell phone talking to her mom.
Actually, they haven’t returned her phone at all, at least according to this story.
Steeplejack
I’m having dinner tonight with my old college friend, who has been a middle-school teacher for 35 years. I’ll be interested to hear her take on this—the specific incident and also cell phones in class in general.
Mnemosyne
@feral1:
Talk to her quietly in the hallway until she calms down and agrees to come along? I know, it sounds crazy, but it just might work.
grandpa john
@Suzanne: but was it reasonable to require her to pay a fee to get back something she owned? I expect that might have something to do with her refusal.
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
The school in question does not appear to be an open campus.
grandpa john
@Mnemosyne: Yep I agree, and to me his posting name is a big tip off. If I had spent my years working with disturbed children, I don;t think I would refer to myself as “feral”
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: All the more reason for the adult parent to see that the phone has to be surrendered.
chopper
@grandpa john:
uh…ok.
grandpa john
@Lost Left Coaster: I have an idea the key word here is “LATINA”
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure there was some amount of disruption, before she was sent into the hall. Any time (back in my epoch, long, long ago) a student willfully defies the teacher, there is some disruption (IMO).
Paul in KY
@Steeplejack: Would be interested to hear their take.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
snark aside, what’s the answer?
feral1
@grandpa john: Christ that’s insulting. I routinely use feral1 as a nick because it refers to an early web development company I started with my brother. It has nothing to do with “disturbed” children.
Suzanne
@grandpa john: I don’t really have an opinion on that specific policy. The point is to be a deterrent, and if nothing else was deterring phone use, then it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
@Mnemosyne: Why is it OK, short of extraordinary circumstances, for a kid to use a cell during class time? Talking in a corridor can also be disruptive, depending on volume level.
By definition, you only hear about extraordinary incidents. Most middle schools and high schools have SROs, I believe, and you don’t hear about 99.44% of them. The reflexive assumption that they are power-mad thugs is not accurate.
raven
I know you all will have a fucking stroke but nowhere in the video nor in the comments in the article does the third guy do anything.
grandpa john
@Mnemosyne:
Good old zero tolerance at work again and once again an idiot who takes it to the extreme.
What are the odds that if the child had been white some grounds for ignoring the policy would have been found?
FrankiInter
How did her mom drive to school so quickly?
Ella in New Mexico
@different-church-lady:
No, not really. Just like it’s not surprising when people who have nothing to contribute to the conversation try to hijack it with concerns about your grammar and syntax.
Yeah, I get it, don’t worry.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
Nothing in the story says that she was chased. In fact, in the interview she says “I wasn’t even running.”
So, excessive force, seems like it. But I don’t think we need to keep adding inflammatory details. She wouldn’t do what she was being told to do, repeatedly. (It’s really not that hard to say, “Mom, the assistant principal is telling me I have to get off the phone and hand it over, I’m in trouble, come get me,” instead of refusing to stop talking, refusing to give up the phone, and walking away after being asked, even if the request was gruff.) THEN the school cops acted in an over-the-top way. Which is far worse than any of the missteps anyone else made. And that’s the public policy issue that’s relevant, I agree.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
If physical force must be used (and I have my doubts that it was truly necessary), how about one cop each grabs an arm right above the elbow?
Suzanne
Here’s the thing about blanket criticism of SROs that bugs me: they are practicing exactly the sort of policing model that most liberals say that they want. They are, for the most part, unarmed; they often form long and friendly relationships with the people in the community they serve (the SRO at my high school hugged many of the students when they graduated—almost all were problematic from a discipline POV); they attempt to deter antisocial behavior before it becomes a bigger problem with more severe consequences; they let teachers, who already have too much to do, DO THEIR JOBS. If this is what we say we want out of policing, then we shouldn’t reflexively assume that they suck.
chopper
@cckids:
I think much of it depends on when and why the AP called security. If the AP figured ‘fuck it I’m done talking to this shithead kid about this fucking cellphone’, vs ‘shit, this kid’s bolting and may be trying to leave the building’.
even in the latter case, that doesn’t excuse the use of force by the cops. OTOH, given the school’s requirement to keep the kids there, I’m not exactly sure how to deal with a kid who is trying to leave that doesn’t involve security people.
FlipYrWhig
@Ella in New Mexico:
Then again, how about… not making phone calls in the middle of the school day? Bathroom break, that’s a genuine problem. But somehow people muddled through hundreds of years of public education making pickup plans in advance and saving up stories for the end of the day. Is there an actual need for constant contact, or has constant contact just crept into becoming the New Normal because it’s now possible?
Ella in New Mexico
@feral1:
Makes sense. But you have to admit that to outsiders, its at the very least a kind of Freudian slip thingy.Kind of like the different-church-lady finger waving about Godwin’s law, I suppose. ;-)
grandpa john
@am: And apparently you don’t see the correlation between this act of over reaction and that of the shooting deaths of the others?. That all of them are acts of over reaction to situations that caused an escalation and confrontation, whereas the use of a non authoritarian response would have resulted in a peaceful resolution,
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: I doubt she was trying to leave. I think she just wanted to walk away from a confrontation with someone who was telling her what to do. Which is both why the summoning of police-style force was excessive and why it would be extremely frustrating to be an asst. principal trying to make someone follow a rather common-sense rule about not talking on the phone in the middle of school.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, so you’re down with physical force and restraint.
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
Indeed. Tho bolting is always a possibility, and honestly no principle wants to call some kid’s mom and say ‘shit, we lost your kid’
FlipYrWhig
@grandpa john: I have to say, though, that figuring out what to do when a kid is just refusing to follow a rule is something that makes every teacher or school administrator have nightmares about. I question how she ended up on the floor. Virtually everything leading up to that point, I don’t question.
Kay
@Ella in New Mexico:
I do think there’s a tension between an seeing rules as authoritarian and seeing rules as an effort to make them aware that there are other people in the world and they have to be aware of them and consider their side of it and that they have to operate in a lot of different “communities”, one of which is a school.
There’s a non-authoritarian way to look at rule-following, basically. My father used to scream at us periodically “what if everyone did that!” and his basic point there was not about following rules for the sake of following them, but because we all have to live together and we don’t get to do anything we want if it puts someone else out. That’s sort of vaguely “progressive” :)
grandpa john
@Ella in New Mexico: just another example of what I saw happening for 28 years. Clueless administrators , silly policy making, and rules with no planning or thought given to the results of their implementation.
Paul in KY
@chopper: Or said kid made the mistake of running out into traffic & was run over.
Sam
@Cervantes: Wouldn’t it have been simpler if she had just given up the phone?
Paul in KY
@Kay: ‘The right of my fist to swing ends at your nose’. Great quote from Justice Holmes.
James E Powell
I saw this as a teacher who has worked in some pretty challenging schools.
The school personnel reactions & actions were totally inappropriate. Adults can wait to deliver a consequence. Set up a meeting with the mother.
That said, a lot of you know less than Jon Snow about kids in high school. You buy the ailing mother story? I’ve heard that story in about 2/3’s of my “hey, put that phone away” moments. And it’s always the mother, never the father, never a brother or sister.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
Hey, you’re the one claiming that the cops had no other choice but to pin her to the ground, not me. I gave you the alternative you wanted, but you’re still clinging to your belief that pinning her to the ground with two cops on top of her was the only possible solution.
Mnemosyne
@James E Powell:
Only because (A) the mother backs up the story that the kid was talking to her and (B) the mother came down to the school immediately after the incident, which leads one to think that she was, in fact, the person on the other end of the phone. If the girl was talking to someone else, how did her mom know to come to the school since the administrators did not call her?
Whether or not it was an important enough conversation for the parent to interrupt the school day is a different question.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
I never said that. I did say that the cops’ action here were way too much. I’m just getting a big ‘why was security involved’ vibe from people here and have been wondering how schools are supposed to reconcile their responsibilities with kids who make a break for it.
Of course, as I’ve pointed out before, once the post count in a thread hits about 150 or so you start putting arguments into other people’s mouths, so this sort of bullshit is to be expected.
cckids
@Kay:
Some of the best advice I ever got about dealing with kids involved knowing the difference between discipline and punishment. The word discipline has the same root as “disciple” (disciplina), meaning a pupil/someone to be taught. Versus punishment was about retribution.
So the question was, when your kid has done something wrong, do you want them to learn to change their behavior? Or do you want to make them pay?
Both, of course, have their place. Clarifying what your objective is makes your choice of actions easier.
feral1
@FlipYrWhig: Your absolutely right about what gives teachers and administrators nightmares. When I worked in schools that did not have clear guidelines on how to deal with those types of situations and the resources to support them, it was UNBELIEVABLY stressful.
As for the girl ending up on the floor. It would have only been justifiable if she was flailing around as the cops tried to escort her to where ever they wanted her to go. At that point she’s at risk of hurting herself. If they put her on the floor as a first resort or if they tried to physically take the phone from her and that led to restraining her, then it was completely unjustified.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
I said, Why not hold her by the arm instead? And you dismissed that out of hand. So which of your words am I supposed to believe?
Dude, go back and read what you said. How is it not dismissing my alternate suggestion for how to physically restrain her without pinning her to the ground with two adult men holding her down?
grandpa john
@feral1: Feral:wild animal 1, existing in an untamed state 2 of or like a wild animal
Well since you are the one who informed us of your work with disturbed children perhaps you should have questioned the use of that particular posting name for this particular thread. I questioned it because I come to this site every day and somehow I don;t recall having seen that particular name here before
kc
@Ella in New Mexico:
In the video she says the AP “asked” her for the phone. Nothing about force.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
Again, 150 posts. At this point you invent whatever the fuck you want about whoever the fuck you want.
I was actually surprised that you were okay with physical restraint, given your posts in this thread. That isn’t ‘dismissal’, and it certainly isn’t ‘three cops kicking the shit out of this kid is totes awesome’ or whatever shit you’ve invented in your addled mind.
kc
@Mnemosyne:
No one is disputing that she was talking to her mother. Obviously she was. It’s the bit about how she had to “check on” her mother’s “medical issues” in the middle of class that sounds like a crock of shit (esp. given that the mother was able to rush over to the school).
For the record, I’m not defending what the cops did; it sounds excessive.
FlipYrWhig
@James E Powell: I’ve never heard the story myself but I’m not at all surprised it would circulate as a tip: “if you get caught talking on the phone, say you were talking to your sick mom, and then they feel bad and leave you alone.”
grandpa john
@FlipYrWhig:
probably this, but we could ask all those adults I see in Walmart or the grocery store ,calling to find out what they are supposed to get. Or all those adult drivers I see calling or texting for what ever reason,
Hey, I can criticize without being a hypocrite because i don;t even own a cellphone
FlipYrWhig
@kc: “Medical issues” can be a lot of things. It can also be a phrase that is reputed to have magical powers.
Bill
@Tiny Tim: This. So much this.
feral1
@grandpa john: Perhaps it would be more constructive for you to engage with the ideas I’m presenting rather than trying to cast doubt on my character based on your wild assumptions about the origin of my nick. Do you think we’d have a productive conversation if I started speculating about early onset Alzheimer’s based on yours?
grandpa john
@FlipYrWhig: You know, in 28 years in the classroom I don’t remember ever having that problem, but back in the day, we didn’t have SRO’s then, I would have sent another student to the office for the principle or AP. It would then have been up to them to handle it. In those days Most AP were also coaches, usually football so they would have handled it
PS since we didn’t have police available in those days,that is one situation that we would not have to worry about
chopper
@grandpa john:
You were a teacher for 28 years? I had no idea!
Nutella
Headline is “student tackled by officers”.
They spelled “attacked” wrong.
The police assaulted her and the school stole her phone. Nice lessons they teach there.
If a student doesn’t follow instructions, why the hell can’t they throw her out of school for the day? That seems like a reasonable response to not following the rules. Calling the cops when no crime at all is going on is nuts.
Kay
@cckids:
Thanks. That’s lovely. Our (grown) kids say we did too much of it. The two older ones joke about how they were always being “selfish”, according to me. They have a whole comedy routine. I do think they can be really self-centered, though, kids. I get why they are like that, they are smaller and vulnerable and they have so little agency but they do have get past it or they’ll be horrible people to be around, is the truth.
elftx
If nothing else, they certainly made her a fine example to the rest of the student body.
“See this is what happens.”
Aholes, the lot of them.
Mnemosyne
@grandpa john:
I’m wondering that, too. If there had been no campus cops available, what did the AP plan to do? Drag the girl to her office by the hair? Or would the AP have managed to figure out a way to handle the situation that didn’t require physical force in a disagreement over a cell phone?
It’s like what cckids said above: right now, authorities seem way too eager to escalate minor events into confrontations.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Right, but … you had good parenting. When you have a kid whose mother is calling her at school (or a mother who allows her kid to call her from school during class), how does the school correct that parenting mistake? I think we can all agree that having two grown men physically restrain a 14-year-old girl is not the best way to do it.
grandpa john
@feral1: no conversation necessary, Like Ella .I rejected most of your conjectures immediately, and as for any discussion about Alzheimer’s,other than the fact that it was one factor that caused the death of my mother, Or any other clever retort you might make I can assure you that I will lose no sleep or give a shit about what you say, Hell I have been insulted by people who are far better at it than you are. However I did note that I was not the only one who suggested that for this particular thread , you did strike a discordant note with your choice of names
grandpa john
@chopper: In teaching, one method of aiding learning is reinforcement by repetition, sort of like learning to ride a bicycle
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
It depends on the situation. Kid is actively trying to harm him/herself or others with a weapon? Physical restraint may be appropriate (though not always necessary). Kid refuses to hand over cell phone? I have a really hard time saying that physical restraint is necessary.
feral1
@grandpa john: Ahhh, now I’ve got it. You start off by insulting me based on wild assumption, don’t simply apologize after a clear explanation, and then decide to simultaneously play the victim and hurl further insults. You’re a peach.
By the way, do you change your nick based on the content of a thread?
C
@Wag: It is a cell phone, not a weapon. Why the cops got involved is beyond me, and the assertion that it is the girl’s fault is just plain wrong, There is no reason for the cops to be involved at all, they had no reason to detain, arrest or intercede at all. Which law did the girl break that required cops to physically assault her? When did it become ok to use force to uphold regulations in school? And why would anyone think its ok to turn our schools into fascist police states? Its unreal that you would even suggest that it was the girls fault, (oh but she was on a cell phone! Quick get the assault weapons!) it was over reaction by school officials and police, and another example of the fascism that has taken hold of our formally democratic nation.
Lit3Bolt
Sad that Balloon Juice is eating up Daily Caller bullshit.
This student was non-compliant to multiple staff, wandering the halls, and once the police asked her to give up her phone, she refused a lawful order. Did the situation escalate? Sure. Could the situation be handled better? Possibly! Should we expect all such situations be handled perfectly every time? Or are you merely reinforcing the unrealistic expectations society places on teachers?
But sure, go ahead and defend your oppositional-defiant lil’ angel and reinforce your binary world-view.
cckids
@Kay:
Yes. My daughter, at 4-ish, had the capability to be a horrid child (not always, but when she got a wild hair, look out!) After months of trying almost everything, I remember sitting down with her once and asking “Some people think I should spank you when you act like this. Do you think that would work?” (I was kind of desperate, but serious)
She thought it over & said “no, it would just make me mad.” So we talked, really talked (as best as a 4-year-old can) about her actions, how dangerous some of them were, and how we could have a more peaceful life. Turned out what she mainly wanted was to have her say. It didn’t mean that she got her way, but the knowledge that she’d be listened to with respect made a big difference. So different from the way I was raised back in the 60’s-70’s.
She and I learned a lot about talking things out, being able to say “I’m angry about x, it’s making me crabby, I’m sorry if I took it out on you/I’m going to go to my room for a while to feel better.” She’s an amazing college student now, with an enormous amount of empathy for other people’s feelings and quite the negotiating ability.
chopper
@grandpa john:
You sure learned us!
C
@Lit3Bolt: Can you cite the law that gives police the authority for her to hand over the phone? If not then the order is not based in law and therefore not a lawful order.
grandpa john
@chopper: Well you have to admit that some of the folks here need a lot of learning
g
When the first instinct you have when dealing with someone who won’t hand off an object, is to physically try to pry it out of her hand, there’s something wrong. Why couldn’t the assistant principal talk with the girl and find out why she felt so strongly about breaking the cell phone rules? Negotiate and come to an agreement that she gives up the phone under certain conditions.
The authoritarian instinct is just so destructive.
ck
@The Moar You Know: Umm, I have about zero sympathy for this spoiled, entitled brat. If my kid did this i would beat their ass and take a hammer to their phone. And give them the opportunity to buy a new one with their own money. Obviously they cant handle it. Or being respectful to adults. #shitheadkids
Mnemosyne
@Lit3Bolt:
The teacher in this situation seems to have done the right thing by sending the student out of the classroom. It’s the assistant principal who decided to be an a-hole. So does society put unrealistic expectations on school administrators by expecting them to be able to handle minor disciplinary problems without radioing for the campus cops to take the kid down?
chopper
@grandpa john:
I think I speak for a pretty large consensus within this commentariat when I say attempting to make a legitimate argument based on a commenter having the word ‘feral’ in his nick is laughably stupid.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
That depends entirely on why the AP called security, which none of us know. Was it because he/she was pissed at the kid? Or because he/she thought the kid was bolting?
It also would depend on if the AP intended for or told the cops to throw her to the ground, which is a fact not in evidence.
Mnemosyne
@ck:
The kid was talking to her mother. So you would punish your kid for talking to her own mother? Shouldn’t you equally punish your wife by taking away her cell phone and smashing it for calling or taking a call from the kid when she knows the kid is at school?
am
@grandpa john:
No, I think they are just about completely unrelated, aside from the fact they both involve police. Very pertinently, the young woman is fine because the officers didn’t resort to guns, tasers, batons, pepper spray, or anything.
Let’s review her admitted facts:
1) she was using her cell phone in class, which the school confiscates and returns for $15 after the school day.
2) she refused to turn it over to the AP and then ran away
3) the AP called HISD, who found her, and asked her to turn over her phone per school policy
4) she refused to hand her phone over to the HISD. They attempted to take it from her hand, she resisted, and they detained her.
The student is a dope and so is the mother. What the hell is the mother doing calling her high school daughter during the middle of her school day? If it’s a medical emergency, then the student is negligent in not bringing that to light *before* any of this happened.
You can imagine scenarios where this is justified on her part, but the student escalated the situation a 4 distinct times and each time it was handled appropriatly by the adults involved.
As far as I can tell, people are only mad at the optics (would it have been better if it was one office instead of 3?)
This is a stupid topic not worth any more of my time, regards.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
Yes, I’m sure that when the AP called the campus cops to come over, she was just expecting them to speak kindly to the student.
Mnemosyne
@am:
Ah, victim blaming at its finest.
kc
@chopper:
Wait’ll he meets Just Some Fuckhead.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
Is it only that or ‘throw the kid to the ground’? You know that the latter was the AP’s intent?
Groucho48
Well, not sure if I want to step into this discussion. I worked for 30-odd years on acute psychiatric units. For my last 15 or so years on the Adolescent Unit. Unless it is an immediate emergency, you absolutely do not want to get into a physical confrontation with less than 3 people. It is much safer for everyone involved than to go with one or two.
For whatever reason, the video doesn’t work for me, so, I can’t comment on that intervention. I will say, assuming anyone, even a 70 pound 14 year old is unable to do damage is the surest way for someone to get hurt. I once got gouged by a little old lady who happened to have fingernails that could cut diamonds. (She was attempting to smash the lounge TV set with a food tray at the time.)
Chances are very good that a physical confrontation could have been avoided, but, we don’t really have enough info to know for sure. Let me repeat that. Chances are very good that a physical confrontation could have been avoided. It’s likely the situation could have been defuses before it became necessary. If it could have been, let’s hope there are consequences for those involve.
But, let’s say, it was necessary. Maybe the girl had a history of running and hurting herself, for example. Or, throwing rocks through windows. Unlikely, but, possible. Assuming all efforts at calming the situation down haven’t worked. Then, there are a couple of alternatives. Physically escort the girl to an office or other empty room and hold her and talk to her until she calms down. Or, get her on the ground, to keep her immobilized and safe. There are safe ways of doing both that minimize the chance of injury to anyone but they do need some practice and coordination. If done in a calm, careful way and if one of the adults keeps talking to the girl in a calm soothing way, things can de-escalate pretty quickly.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that all this talk about it taking three grown men to subdue a 70 pound girl is just awful, is wrong. It takes three or more adults to subdue a 70 pound girl safely. Again, I can’t see the video, so, I don’t know exactly what they did. If they were angry or used more physical force than necessary, or were yelling at her, they are in the wrong. Did they throw her to the ground? Did they slap or punch? Were they careful that her head didn’t get banged down, or her neck or limbs twisted dangerously? If they used more force than was necessary or if they used force in a dangerous way, they need to face consequences. But, the mere fact that three adults brought her to the ground and immobilized her is neither a good thing or a bad thing without context.
Another reason for having more than one person is that if it is one-on-one, then, there’s a good chance the kid will fight because he/she thinks folks will think they are a coward if they don’t and that’s a powerful motivator for a teen-ager. With three or more, they generally make one gesture or move then stop… as long as the adults are calm and soothing. Often, being immobilized is kind of what they want. They know they are messing up but don’t have the tools or emotional control to end things on their own. Generally, the next step would be to summon a teacher or whoever that has a rapport with the kid. The kid will almost always calm right down. Let her up, she runs and hugs the teacher, bursts into tears and, after a bit, can talk reasonably about what happened.
am
@Mnemosyne:
Would you call your high school daughter in the middle of the school day?
What kind of parent calls their kind during class? Or doesn’t kick their butt for calling them with a non-emergency during class.
This is so freaking basic: if you have a medical emergency, you call the school to get your kid. Anyone with an ounce of sense in their head would do that.
Mnemosyne
@Groucho48:
Here’s what an eyewitness in the story linked to above says:
If the main concern is preventing the kid from disturbing other students, why are they doing this where it can be seen and filmed by other students?
Mnemosyne
@am:
Obviously, her kind of parent, since that’s what happened. So the child needs to be punished and humiliated in front of her classmates because of her mother’s bad parenting?
am
@Mnemosyne:
Yup, I blame the girl entirely, she brought this entirely on herself through decisions of her own making. She was violating the rules and morally in the wrong. She got detained, and I see no problem with it.
If I say someone deserved a speeding ticket because they were, in fact, speeding, it’s takes some damn chutzpah to call that victim blaming.
Everyone but her tried to deal with the situation appropriately.
Mnemosyne
@Groucho48:
Also, I continue to have a problem saying that a (presumably) normal kid should be treated like they’re an enraged mental patient. I know parents joke about kids being temporarily insane during puberty, but there should be some kind of line, don’t you think?
feral1
@Groucho48: It sounds like your experience and training parallels my own and I completely agree with everything you wrote.
Mnemosyne
@am:
And the six-year-old who was handcuffed and taken down to the police station? After all, she had a tantrum and broke the rules. Any problem with that?
How about the eighth grader who was strip-searched to check her for contraband ibuprofen? After all, it was against school rules to have Motrin on campus and she broke the rule, so that was totally justified, yes?
Out of curiosity, in your mind is there any situation where the cops would not be justified in using force against a student who breaks the rules?
C
Calling the cops because a student was using a cell phone. This is acceptable to people? Is failure to follow school regulations now reason enough to have the cops come and physically assault students, now acceptable? Does having the police enforce school regulations (not laws) seem ok for you? If your answer is in the affirmative to any of these questions, you are an authoritarian, and would fit right in, in places like Saudi Arabia and China, or groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS and Nazis.
demit
@Ella in New Mexico: Good grief, I AM old.
When I was in high school, if I had an emergency message from home, it went to the main office and they came & got me out of class. If I had an emergency of some sort I went up to the teacher & let her know what it was. This business of kids routinely using their phones in class is way beyond my ken.
am
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t blame them, those were different situations and different sets of facts.
Spider-Dan
I don’t think the point of “it doesn’t take 3 cops to subdue a 70lb girl” is valid. The school cops (which are what HISD police officers are) were already on campus, and when an AP calls for police back up to deal with a kid that will not follow directions and is just walking away from the school authorities/doing whatever she wants, it is not that unbelievable for 3 of them to show up. Once they are there and the girl refuses to give up the phone, should 2 of them go stand well off to the side while the 3rd physically restrains the girl and takes her phone? That would likely have even worse results.
Of course, you could make the (fair) point that they shouldn’t have physically taken the phone from her, but that’s a different subject: if you disagree with the rule that kids who use their phones in school have them confiscated, then make that argument.
I would agree with the simpler rule of “refuse to hand over your phone and you earn an automatic [harsh penalty]” (3-day suspension seems right to me), but if the girl is already refusing to listen to the authorities and simply walking away from authorities who say things she doesn’t like, the suspension is no more enforceable than the phone confiscation and you’re right back to “teenaged girl gets manhandled by school police.”
Finally, the whole “my mom has a medical condition” thing is just nonsense. Her mom clearly wasn’t in a medical emergency, and if she was, the kid would have been saying “someone take me to go help my mom,” not “I don’t want to give you my phone because it’s mine.” Having a family member with a medical condition does not give you a blanket phone exemption to be invoked at your whim.
chopper
@C:
I don’t think anyone is arguing anything of the sort, nor is that what happened.
Mnemosyne
@am:
True, the six-year-old broke school property during her tantrum and was charged with a crime, but it was still worse for a 14-year-old to refuse to hand over her cell phone?
The eighth-grader knowingly had contraband Motrin on campus, but it was worse for a 14-year-old to refuse to hand over her cell phone?
Sorry, but I’m not getting what is so different in the current case that the campus cops were justified in using force because of rule-breaking but the other two cases were overreactions to rule-breaking.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
I’ve seen several people in this thread arguing that the campus cops were right to wrestle the girl to the ground to take away her cell phone. Only a few comments above yours, am is arguing that the girl got what she deserved for not obeying the rules. Have we been reading the same thread?
am
Look, I hate the use of force by police because it’s so frequently overused and the degree of force is outrageous. I just don’t think this is a case of that.
To answer your question, it’s not about complying with the rules. If the principal tells you to come to his office and you don’t, what happens? If the teacher tells you to stop doing something, and you don’t, what happens? It’s not the rule breaking, it’s being refusing to accept the consequence of the rule breaking.
Look, we probably agree on a lot more things than we disagree on. I can’t continue the conversation, so hope you have a good night/weekend.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
Has anyone argued that the cops should have been called because she used her phone? I’ve seen arguments about her refusing to give up her phone, yes. But not at all the former. You see any posts as to the former?
Mnemosyne
@am:
I think there’s something about the cell phone in this story that’s setting off people’s Kids Get Off My Lawn meter. It really is common these days for parents to give their kids a cell phone and to check up on their kids during the day. I understand that it drives teachers crazy, but there’s got to be a better way to handle it than to punish a kid for talking to her own mother. Phone cubbies on the teacher’s desk? Telling kids their phones have to be out but face-down on the desk at all times so the teacher can see they’re not using it during class?
But here’s the difference right now: you seem to think it’s a logical and rational consequence for minor rulebreaking to have two grown men pin a 14-year-old girl down in a hallway in front of her classmates and forcibly take her cell phone away from her. I do not think that should be a logical and rational consequence of minor rulebreaking. And, as I said above, I seriously doubt that this situation would have resulted in physical force if the AP hadn’t been able to call the campus cops in to do her dirty work for her.
Groucho48
@Mnemosyne:
I said several times that I didn’t think that the girl need to be physically restrained but, that there were circumstances where it might be the best option, and then emphasized that the focus should be on seeing no one, especially the girl, got hurt and on not making the situation worse. I was mostly trying to say that folks who seem upset that there were three cops involved need to realize that it’s better for everyone involved to have three rather than one.
If the video shows the cops just tackling the girl and smashing her to the ground they absolutely did wrong and should face consequences.
Spider-Dan
@Mnemosyne:
Ultimately, I don’t see how physical force could have been avoided, given the actions of the girl to that point.
Are you going to send her to detention instead of physically taking her phone? In-house suspension? Send her home? How do you propose to enforce any of those things if she is simply walking away from the authorities?
As am said, it’s not so much about the rule-breaking, it’s about the refusal to accept the consequences of the rule-breaking. If you have a kid that is openly defiant and just does whatever she wants, physical force is basically unavoidable.
Again: she didn’t get tackled and restrained for talking on the phone to her mom. She got tackled and restrained because after she was talking on the phone to her mom, she refused to hand over her phone, then ignored the AP and walked away from her. She escalated well beyond “minor rulebreaking.”
Mnemosyne
@Groucho48:
When it comes to the tactics of controlling someone who’s irrational and violent, I know what you’re saying. The husband of one of my co-workers used to be a psychiatric RN and he got injured several times because they decided to try and send him in solo to subdue someone. (Now he’s working in the cardiac ICU, which he finds much less stressful.)
What bothers me is that saying that it’s the tactic that professionals use when working with emotionally disturbed children and mental patients seems to imply that (presumably) normal teenagers should be treated like violent mental patients. It still seems to me that the assistant principal escalated this whole incident way beyond what was necessary just because the girl didn’t immediately comply with the order to give up the cell phone.
The video only shows the girl when she’s already on the ground, so if you can see the still frame, that’s pretty much what the video shows. Ironically it was taken by one of her fellow students on his iPhone.
Mayken
@grandpa john: Yes, this, too!
C
@chopper: People are arguing just that, and unless i missed something, this whole incident is all about a girl using her cell phone. About your point about not giving up the cell phone, its no distinction at all. First of all it is her property, she has no legal compulsion to give it up. Second of all the AP already called the cops before confronting the student, so the cops were called because she was using the phone. According to the article she said the she was trying to get away from the AP and stated that the cops were already called at that point. While its hard to tell for sure what the timing of the call was, either before or after the confrontation between the student and the AP, it really doesnt matter. The point is, cops were called for what should have been a internal school matter, again, there is no law that says she cannot use the cell phone in school, it is a school regulation, therefore the cops have no business getting involved .
chopper
@C:
When I was in high school a kid I know started nodding off in science class. The teacher got a bit pissed and the kid talked back to him a bit so he sent him to the principal’s office. Apparently from what we were able to put together he flipped out on the principal and dived over his desk trying to get a piece of the guy and had to be restrained and taken out of the building by the cops. None of us could figure out why but he just fucking flipped.
Later on a kid i knew who was his best friend was pissed and said something like ‘dude all he did was fall asleep in class. and they arrested him!’
Point is, no, this story isn’t only about ‘using your phone in class’. And nobody is arguing that the cops should be called merely over such. You’re deliberately ignoring an entire story to focus merely on the first line.
Spider-Dan
@C: HISD police are school cops. It is explicitly their business.
demit
@Mnemosyne: It seems to me, throughout this long thread, you have been insisting on seeing only two events: the girl using the cellphone in class, and the school officers pinning her on the floor. As if there were not several steps in between.
There was a series of events. There was a student being openly defiant several steps along the way. It’s not irrelevant to point out that her actions contributed to the escalation. You seem to want to characterize the incident as “minor school infraction/ first response, cop overreaction!”
You can downplay the use of a cellphone in class all you want. The fact is the school has a rule against it. The kid broke the rule. People all through this thread have been suggesting how the situation could have been handled better, but tell me, what would you have done? Ignored the fact that the girl broke a school rule? Would you have said to her, Oh, that’s okay, I’m not going to do anything here, it’s only a minor rule?
C
@chopper: Again in no way did the girl pose any threat. The whole incident is about her using the phone. Your story is irrelevant, and has no correlation to the story at hand. It does however give me insight into your mindset, as you seem to be assuming that the girl was somehow a threat to the AP or others, which according to the article is not what happened. Do not accuse me of “You’re deliberately ignoring an entire story to focus merely on the first line.” and then go on to assume that somehow it was her fault that the cops assaulted her. And again, this is simply because she used her cell phone, everything after that is because of that, so yes this is about her using the cell phone, other wise nothing else would have happened. And as I have stated before, she has no legal compulsion to give up the phone, and the cops have no legal authority to make her do so.
So I guess my question is, if you think that the cops should not have been called for her use of the cell, then why are you arguing with me? What in the article makes you believe that there is justification for the cops assaulting a minor?
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
Came back to check on this thread and here you are, almost 100 posts since I was last here, the lone survivor swinging her sword of sanity and justice.
I bow my head to your awesome powers of perseverance, Madam. ;-)
Mnemosyne
@Ella in New Mexico:
Well, my boss is out of the office today, so I had some extra time on my hands. ;-)
C
@demit: At no time during the incident did the student do anything unlawful, requiring law enforcement to be present. Defiant? yes. Broke school rules? yes. But none of these are against the law. There was nothing she done that broke any laws. School rules are not the same as statutes and laws, this is the problem here. The cops have no business being involved in this matter at all. This is the argument here, not if the kid broke some school rules, was being defiant, or even being disruptive. The issue is that people think that it is ok to use force to make someone comply with school rules. This is where many of us take issue. For merely breaking school rules (again this is not a law, it is a school rule, there are no laws against the use of cell phones in school) the cops were called, and then the cops used force to make her comply. This to me was unlawful, as in, no rule of law to be enforced.
Groucho48
@Mnemosyne:
Well, those “tactics” basically consist of staying calm, treating the kid as gently and respectfully as possible, don’t take anything the kid says personally or engage them if they say emotional stuff, have some training and practice in physically escorting someone safely (hint…you hook their arms and walk them backwards.) and in getting them immobilized on the floor safely, and keep talking quietly and soothingly the whole time. If…and that’s a big if…physical intervention is needed, those tactics are probably the ones to use.
In other words, don’t treat them as criminals or the enemy, treat them as kids having a bad time of it. If the guys who tackled her were part of school security, they should have special training in all that stuff. If they didn’t get any, then, that’s an institutional problem that needs to be addressed.
Mnemosyne
@demit:
Since you seem to have skipped over many of my comments, I will repeat them:
I think the teacher acted correctly by asking the student to leave the classroom if she was going to take a call from her mother.
I think the assistant principal did not do her job since she had to call three campus cops in to forcibly take a kid’s cell phone away from her in view of the kid’s fellow students. I think the AP probably had a whole lot more options that she could have used, but she decided to cut to the chase and use physical force via the campus cops.
So far, I have seen no allegations that the kid was violent towards the AP or anyone else. The worst she did was walk away while the AP was talking to her. And, in your mind, this completely merits her being wrestled to the ground and having her cell phone forcibly taken away from her?
I’m pretty sure that detention still exists. I’m pretty sure that the AP could have called the girl’s mother to come take her home. I’m pretty sure that the AP’s only option was not to have two grown men wrestle a 14-year-old to the ground, and yet that was the choice that she made.
Mnemosyne
@C:
Slight clarification — as far as anyone can tell, these were campus cops who were assigned to the high school, so the assistant principal didn’t call anyone from outside. These were officers who were already stationed at the school.
C
For clarity:
This is about using the police to enforce school rules (not actual laws) through force. The student in question has no legal compulsion to give up the phone, school rules are not laws, and are unenforceable by law, meaning no law was passed making anything that the student did unlawful, which means the cops were only there to force compliance, not to uphold or enforce the law, which is why I find this story so upsetting.
Mnemosyne
@Groucho48:
That’s what a lot of us are saying, though — it is an institutional problem. In a lot of schools, kids are being treated like criminals. See the story I linked to above about an eighth-grader being strip-searched because she was suspected of having ibuprofen. All of that stuff that you would do at your job to de-escalate and calm a situation is NOT being done, and physical force by campus police and/or calling in outside cops is being substituted in for it.
C
@Mnemosyne: Understood, but she still had to “call” or alert them to this either way.
Groucho48
@Mnemosyne:
Well, it’s possible the staff did all the proper things in this instance or it’s possible they didn’t. Odds are, they didn’t, but, without more information I don’t think there’s anymore we can say. It would be interesting to see what kind of specialized training, if any, the security force at the school received.
I’ve been picking up my 15 year old grandson after football practice and there’s one cop assigned to the school and he often stops by to chat with the kids about sports and stuff. All the kids seem to know and like him and he knows their names and such. That should be the norm.
Cervantes
Another report:
C
It is sad to me, that what seems so obvious to me is lost on so many people. The obvious part is using force and cops to enforce school rules is not right. The rules are not law, and using cops to enforce non-lawful rules is the epitome of authoritarian mindsets. The police are their to enforce the law, not school rules!!!!! The way I see it the only reason to do this is to condition children on the use of force by police, so they accept the police state as normal. I cannot and will not accept this. If you do, then we might as well drop the illusion of liberty and democracy in this country and submit to fascist rule. (and yes our democracy and our liberty are mere illusions now)
James E Powell
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, the mother backed up her daughter’s story? Please.
C
To all you defending the cops and the school official,could you please explain to me why the use of force here is acceptable.
demit
@Mnemosyne: You know, I thought of editing my comment to add, And please don’t tell me that what shouldn’t have been done is wrestle the kid to the ground. I thought I didn’t have to, since I was asking you a direct question: What would YOU have done?
I have read every one of your comments, and they all have the theme of “What she did was very minor/it didn’t warrant physical force” as if the physical force was the first & only response to her cellphone use in class.
I am not asking what the school officials could have done. I am asking you what YOU would have done. If you were in the Assistant Principal’s shoes, what would YOU have done? Besides—because I know this sentiment of yours very well by now—not calling the campus cops?
grandpa john
@chopper: you are probably right, because most people don’t seem to be able to understand hidden inferences that can be insinuated by the way they use language plus you also need some knowledge of the dictionary definition of words that are not commonly used in posting. when one has a lack of knowledge about a subject any discussion of said subject will of course seem stupid to them. and since your interpretation of what I posted is not even close to the intent of what I actually was inferring in my post, there is really no point of going any farther with this, But I do realize that you are an expert in stupid posts.
chopper
@C:
The ‘whole story’ is not solely about her using her phone. You know that. Don’t act like it is.
chopper
@C:
I can’t speak for everyone, but
1) the cops totally overreacted and it’s indefensible
2) the AP may or may not have, depending on why exactly he or she called security. We don’t know why, which has been my point here.
C
@chopper: Your right its not, its about using force to gain compliance. Thats what this is about, the use of phone or the refusal to give it up is not the story here. What, in your opinion then is the whole story here? That she ignored demands to give up the phone? Is that reason enough to use force? And if so why?
chopper
@grandpa john:
hidden inferences? Jesus, man, it’s an internet nickname. It means nothing here. You’re reaching.
feral1
@Cervantes:
This is why the school resource officers were called. Not because she was using her cell phone. That’s not to say that the cops handled the situation correctly when they confronted her. We don’t know right now. But students just ignoring and walking away from staff is a recipe for chaos in the school. No one in this thread who is convinced that the school staff handled this badly has explained what should be done if students remain non-compliant with reasonable directions like “Give me the phone.” or “Come with me to the office.”
grandpa john
@Mayken: One thing this thread has revealed to me is just how little so many people know about how their schools operate,what their policys and regulations are, and how little they understand the kids that attend those schools
C
@chopper: Unless the student was violent, and nowhere have I seen any allegations of that, then the AP has no reason to involve the police. And since the only thing the cops did was assault her and take her phone, it seems reasonable to infer that the only reason the cops were called in was to forcibly take the phone away (forced compliance to a school rule, again not the same as actual law). There are no charges filed against the child and she was suspended, not expelled which would have happened if she had accosted the AP. So yeah over reaction all around.
grandpa john
yeah me too, I came back to check, but realized that the authoritarians have arrived in full voice and any attempt to invoke reason is futile
C
@feral1: You continue to talk to the student until he or she complies, if that doesnt happen you contact the students parents.
Also lets put the incident into context, the student here was worried about the health of her mother, who she reasonably believed might have been in trouble, if it was your mother, would you give up your phone and comply? If I were the AP and this was the information I was presented with, I am confident I could resolve this situation with out resorting to violence. What happened instead is the AP demanded the phone, and when the student ignored the order, got pissed and called the cops on her. Perhaps if the AP took the time to find out what was happening before issuing demands this wouldnt have happened at all. Using force is the easy way, talking it out is hard and time consuming.
grandpa john
@chopper: and you are reinforcing my point about people not understand context
grandpa john
@C: lack of vision and awareness seems to be a national shortcoming. I dare say few Americans even understand what authoritarianism and facism even is.
feral1
@C:
What do you do with the student in hours between their non-compliance and getting their parents to school, if you are even able to reach them?
grandpa john
@demit: I would have expected her to do the job she was hired to do, just as AP’s had to do back in the days when we didn’t have school cops.
slag
It’s always good idea, when a girl doesn’t do what she’s told, to resort to violence.
Christ. Send the girl home, suspend her, even expel her if you really care so goddamned much. But tackling her to take away her phone? What kind of lesson is that? Might makes right? Seriously, what are we going for here?
ETA I have little sympathy for the girl here, to be honest. The issue is: What kind of society are we trying to be? That is the question that the adults in the room should be focused on.
C
@grandpa john: I fear that what you say is the truth.
Cervantes
@feral1:
There is no correct one-size-fits-all answer to your very general question. In general, it depends on who the student is and what he or she is like, what he or she is going through, and how important it is that those “reasonable directions” be followed.
And even in this particular case, there are still too many unknowns to make it worth responding to your question in detail. For example: What is the student’s history with teachers and staff? What is the AP’s history with students? Was any sort of weapon involved? Did the student enunciate any threat? How much time did the AP have available to deal with the student? What did the AP actually say to the student? If time was short, then was a guidance counselor or anyone else, short of police officers, available to be called upon for help? How much did the AP actually try to avoid having to call the officers in?
Leaving all those and other unknowns unresolved, and just going by the few reports we have, here’s what I might have tried: Instead of confronting the kid and commanding her to obey, instead of throwing one’s weight around at her (even not literally), ask her what is happening that is causing the behavior. Instead of a stand-off in the hallway, instead of trying to force her into The Principal’s Office, invite her to have a snack and a low-key conversation in the cafeteria or some other neutral space. If it turns out her behavior stems from a problem she is trying to deal with, then for Pete’s sake help her deal with the problem. It may seem unfair that an AP has to act as a social worker but, in fact, we all have to act as social workers from time to time. That is the nature of living in society.
FlipYrWhig
@C: This thread is wasting away as it probably should, but, look, here’s the situation. It’s really not an unreasonable request for the assistant principal to say, “you know there’s a rule against using phones in school, now you have to hand it over to me.” Faced with that, the kid walked away. Kid flouting authority is already a volatile situation. I suspect that the asst. principal radioed the school cops to say “there’s a kid who’s been sent out of class for using her phone and she’s just walking away from me, I need backup.” From what I’ve seen of the story, I figure the cops showed up keyed up, barked at her to comply, then made sure she complied by using excessive physical force on her. That’s bad police work, no doubt. They could have, say, marched her into the principal’s office, or marched her out of the building to wait for her mom. But I really don’t think the asst. principal did anything wrong, and I highly doubt that she called in some muscle specifically to rough up the troublemaker because she’s just a fascist like that. The kid _could have_ said all kinds of things. Like “I know it looks like I’m breaking the rules but my mom is sick and my dad is worried.” Kids LOVE to explain themselves when they’re caught doing Something Bad. The fact that in that situation she just went on walkabout… that bothers me, and I don’t want to wave that away.
Also, I said earlier that if the mom had actual health problems I’d feel bad for doubting it, and she did, it seems, so I feel bad for that. But you can tell from the amount of skepticism that followed from the statement that her reality is a good match for a lot of other kids’ excuses.
C
@feral1:Well since we are talking about what happened in this particular incident, I doubt that it would have taken much more than 20 mins tops to resolve the issue. As far as other incidents, you keep talking until it is resolved, there is just no reason at all to resort to force.
Are you implying that because it might take awhile to talk with a student then that justifies using force to gain compliance?
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
Why, funny you should mention that…the youngest has lunch detention Monday for tardiness in the 2nd degree, per my previously described reduced passing period times at his high school.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
But she’s not “a lot of other kids.” She is one kid, different from every other. An adult who can’t or routinely forgets to treat a child as an individual has no business being an assistant principal at any school, I’m pretty sure you agree.
Ella in New Mexico
@Cervantes: Thank you so much!
Ok, everyone siding with tackling the 75lb little girl because she lied, walked away from the AP, or refused to hand over her personal belongings to the FUCKING NAZIS YES I SAID NAZIS
http://www.click2houston.com/news/high-school-girl-describes-moments-when-3-officers-pinned-her-at-school/27857966
this link is why what happened to her was 100%, completely and totally wrong. And if you just don’t get it then there is absolutely no hope for you.
SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!
chopper
@C:
The AP does if he or she has reason to believe the student is trying to leave the building. The school is legally responsible for the kid’s safety and well-being, and thus kids are not allowed to leave during school hours on their own. If a kid is looking to bolt security will be called. I’ve pointed that out numerous times here.
I’ve never once said cops need to be involved over a refusal to give up a cell phone. Not once.
C
@FlipYrWhig:The point you are missing is that there is no reason at all for the cops to be involved. So the kid walked away, I will assume she did so because she was intent on finding out what, if anything, was happening to her mother, and anything outside of that was not worth her paying attention to. I know if I was worried about my mother, there would be nothing that would stand in my way until I was satisfied my mother was not in danger. So her walking away does not mean that the cops should be called in. The AP could have followed her, but instead chose to bring in cops to do what? Since they used force, that seems like it would be a reasonable inference that that was the reason the cops were called in, to force compliance. And on top of that, the cops have no lawful reason to force compliance on the student, she broke no laws at all.
The assistant principle in question should understand the basics of dealing with teenagers, and should have been able to resolve the issue without cops, instead of trying to resolve it, at the first sign of any defiance of the student she called in the cops. This is what is wrong here. The AP’s job is to resolve these issues, not call the cops. She failed to do her job, instead called in some thugs to do it.
chopper
@Ella in New Mexico:
It’s true, this assistant principal did kill a lot of Jews.
C
@chopper: The student did not leave the building at any time, and if the AP was doing her job would have noted that, instead she immediately called in the cops. There are doors, could have posted the cops at the door to prevent her from leaving, but thats not what happened instead they used violence to take her phone, that is what happened, what you think might be the issue here is not the same as what actually is. Nowhere was there any indication that she had intended on leaving school, nor does there seem to be any effort on the AP to ascertain what was happening, she demanded the phone and when the student refused, called in the police, the police assaulted her, those are the facts, so regardless of what you think your are arguing, it is indeed all about forcing the girl into compliance with the use of force. The cops did not tackle her because she was trying to leave school, they tackled her because she would not give up her property. This is what happened. I
chopper
@C:
Obviously the student never left the building. You don’t wait to call security until after the kid leaves if you think they’re making a run for it.
We’re all going by assumptions here. I’m pointing out that yes, the AP may have been a power-hungry asshole here. Then again, there are other possibilities. The AP could have thought the kid was trying to leave.
We weren’t there. You don’t know why the AP called security. You’re just assuming based on your own gut feelings.
Ella in New Mexico
@chopper:
But why, I ask, why? First they came for the Socialists…;-)
C
@chopper: Again the facts are at no time was there any reference to the student trying to leave. However we do know for a fact that the AP tried to get the cell from the student and when the student refused called in the cops, and the cops tackled her after she refused to give up the phone. So there is no assumption here on my part, the assumptions about her trying to leave school are all yours. You are just trying to find ways to give the AP reason to call in the cops. And as I have been arguing, upon the facts that are known there is no reason for the police to be involved.
chopper
@C:
We know the student turned and walked off. The student didn’t say afterwards anything about wanting to leave, but that’s only her story to the press anyways so it’s obviously not the complete story.
Unfortunately the school is not going to release the AP’s story, unless maybe there’s a lawsuit.
C
@chopper: Your assumption here is that when she walked away from the AP she intended on leaving school and that justifies being assaulted by cops? Stopping her before she at least reached the doors is like stopping someone for shoplifting before they even got to the check out lines. Until she leaves the school or at the very least gets to the doors you cannot assume she had any plans on leaving. At this point what ever is said by the AP I will treat just like you treat the word of the student. With utter contempt and disbelief. Why you might ask? Because in the end the outcome is the same no matter who says what, this student was assaulted by police who have no reason at all to be involved. You can claim all you want that the AP might have thought she was going to leave, it still would not justify calling the cops in, much less pinning the student to the ground. The fact remains, there is no lawful reason for the cops to be involved. Until the student attempts to leave the school, there is no reason at all to be concerned with that. Arguing over what the circumstances are is really a moot point, because nothing short of the student getting violent would justify the use of force to gain her compliance.
C
There is no reason for Cops to be used to enforce school codes. Cops are there to uphold the law, not to uphold school rules or codes. Unfortunately that is exactly what is happening now, and kids are being sent to Juvie for the most basic of infractions, like farting in class.http://reason.com/blog/2012/11/29/the-town-where-farting-can-land-a-kid-in There is no force of law here, these are not laws that the cops should or even can legally uphold. The only time a cop should be involved in school is where there is an actual crime, be it a fight, theft or truancy which there is actual laws in place that the cops can enforce.
slag
@chopper:
OK. You do realize that school and prison are not the same thing, right?
Oooh…she’s on the lam! With a cellular telephone, no less! Where’s George Zimmerman when you need him?
Mnemosyne
@demit:
Again, I answered this above, but I will repeat myself: I would have spoken calmly to the student until she agreed to come to my office. Assuming that the account Cervantes posted above is true, the teacher was already talking to the student about using her cell phone in class when the assistant principal butted in and demanded that she hand over the phone. Contrary to popular belief among some adults, demanding instant obedience from an upset teenager is pretty much guaranteed to produce the opposite result.
C
I suppose people must quibble with the details, that way they do not have to address the real issue here, the creeping fascism in our society. When I was in High School in the 90s people would have been outraged if something like this happened in a school somewhere, but now people act like its ok. Somehow people just started to accept the creeping fascism in our country. I really am loosing all hope that we will ever have our liberties restored. When people will defend the assaulting of a minor by police over something as trivial as non-compliance of a school code we have surely sunk to new lows. I weep for the next generations, we have failed them.
Mnemosyne
@feral1:
Let’s look at this graf from what Cervantes posted:
Think back for a minute to your experience working with emotionally disturbed kids. If you were talking calmly to the kid about their behavior, and another teacher or administrator walked up and starting making demands of the kid, did you consider that to be acceptable behavior on the part of that other teacher or administrator? Would you expect the kid to whom you were talking to be able to immediately shift their focus to the other adult and obey their instructions, or would you expect the kid to be confused and/or upset by the interruption?
As I’ve said multiple times, even by the kid’s account the teacher acted completely appropriately — she asked the student to leave the room because she was disturbing the other students and then went outside to talk to her and find out why she was using her cell phone against the rules. It appears to be the AP who escalated the whole thing into a clusterfuck.
AndoChronic
And people wonder why kids bring guns to school.
chopper
@slag:
I’m all for changing the rules that require schools to keep students in the building. Until those are changed, however, administrators are going to take the issue pretty seriously.
Spider-Dan
@C:
You keep referencing “the cops” as if actual police officers were taken away from robberies and speed traps to come get this girl.
The assistant principal called the school police, whose primary purpose is to deal with unruly students. When the teen decided that she was no longer interested in listening to what the AP had to say and walked away, that is a textbook (ahem) example of exactly what the HISD police are there to handle. If you want to make the argument that HISD police should not exist, then do so, but the AP was taking the correct action to call them.
And once again: the idea that physical force was a totally unnecessary reaction is simply naive. The alternative solutions that have been offered so far (e.g. talk to the student, give her detention, suspend her from school) do not work if the teen is walking away and ignoring you. The idea that a student can simply ignore administrators and walk away from conversations they don’t like is not remotely reasonable.
demit
@Mnemosyne: I keep wondering all through this why the girl didn’t at the beginning say to the teacher, But my mom’s sick! My dad doesn’t know where she is! That’s why I’m checking my phone!
Or why she didn’t say to the AP, Please don’t take my phone! My mom’s sick! My dad doesn’t know where she is! I’m really worried!
I’m not a teacher and I’m not a parent. My only frame of reference is that I was a high schooler once. If I broke a rule, but it was for a good reason, the first words out of my mouth would’ve been to explain, to justify myself. Not to say No, I won’t give you my phone. Not to turn my back & walk away from a school officer. I would’ve said But but but…!
And that’s what I can’t understand about this story. Of course it’s absurd that it ends in her being on the floor with a campus cop’s knee on her neck. But she had some control, she had agency in this situation as it developed—at no time did she think to tell anybody WHY she needed to be on the phone even though it violated school policy—so the story as she tells it has, to me, very puzzling gaps.
slag
@chopper: For most people, truancy is more of a “call your parents” serious than it is a “call 911” serious. Even in situ.
Mnemosyne
@Spider-Dan:
@demit:
Re-read the quote I highlighted at #403 and tell me again that the assistant principal acted correctly in this situation.
Frankly, that poor teacher must be really pissed off right now — she was doing everything right when the AP decided to butt in and assert her authoritah.
slag
@demit: Who gives a shit? She’s a kid. Making dumb mistakes is her job. Let the adults be the responsible ones. That’s their job.
Probably one of our greatest cultural problems at this moment in time is this tendency to carelessly separate responsibility from power. We see this tendency in laissez faire economists, police statists, and Republicans, in general. It needs to stop.
slag
@Spider-Dan:
Oh my god! She’s walking away! Ignoring authority! Emergency! Emergency! Calling all officers!
Good thing the cops were able to capture and restrain her because the only reasonable next step would have been to call in the national guard.
Spider-Dan
@Mnemosyne:
Given that the existing school regulation was “use your phone in class, have it confiscated” (to the extent that there was a standardized fee for retrieving it), and that the teacher had stopped teaching the class to go outside and talk to the student about her phone use, and the first words that the AP said upon entering the conversation was “Give me your phone,” I think it stands to reason that the teacher was likely talking to the student about giving up her phone. So even if we go straight off the account of the student, I don’t think the AP was out of line.
Furthermore, there are several other parts of the story that raise questions:
– was the AP called by the teacher because of a class distruption, or was she coincidentally in the area?
– if the AP was not called, and the student and teacher were having a respectful hallroom dialogue, how would the wandering AP have even been aware of the topic of discussion?
– given this particular student’s disinclination to give up her phone (and the known rule about phone confiscation), how long had this teacher already been talking in the hall to this student about giving up her phone?
As I see it, this student had likely already taken a sizable chunk of her classmates’ time, and the AP wanted to end the conversation and let the teacher get back to teaching. As #407 said, I’ve been a high schooler, and I know that if I had a legitimately ill and missing parent, all I would have had to do is say so and they would not be able to whisk me away to a phone fast enough.
Mnemosyne
@Spider-Dan:
Okay, I’ll try to put this into adult terms for you:
Let’s say you have a problem employee. This employee needs to finish a report. You are calmly discussing the situation with this employee when one of your co-managers comes in and says, “Isn’t that report done yet? Why isn’t that report done? You need to go back to your desk right now and get it for me!”
So, in your terms, that would be a completely appropriate thing for your co-manager to do and the employee should immediate obey that manager’s order, because after all, you were already discussing the report, so it’s no big deal for someone else to come along and make the same demand, right?
Or, heck, let’s put it into kid terms. Let’s say you’re talking calmly to your kid who just got into trouble for using his cell phone at school. As you’re having this discussion, your wife comes into the room and demands that the kid immediately hand over his phone so she can lock it away. Is that an appropriate thing for her to demand? After all, she’s only asking for the same thing, so it’s no big deal how she asks for it or if she interrupts your discussion to do it, right?
Spider-Dan
@Mnemosyne:
I guess the fundamental difference is that you appear to believe that the student and teacher were in the hall discussing the finer points of chaos and order, whereas I believe that the only reason any discussion proceeded past the point of the teacher saying “OK, give me your phone” is because the student refused to hand over the phone. If the student had said to the teacher, in class, “My sick mom is missing, can I go to the admin office?”, I have a hard time believing that the teacher would want to debate that in the hall.
I think the far more likely scenario is that the AP was specifically called to the classroom because the student refused to hand over the phone, and that the AP walked up as the teacher and student were discussing whether or not she would hand over the phone (at which point “give me your phone” is a pretty understandable opening statement). From what I can tell, at every point in this conflict the student chose to make this about keeping her phone, rather than simply saying, “my dad just called me to tell me my sick mom is missing and I need to call him from the office immediately.”
There’s a very simple explanation for why she chose to go that route: her mom’s status was not her primary concern, but keeping her phone was. This would seem to be confirmed by the fact that when the school police came to take her phone, she was already talking to her mom… at which point the “missing mom” worry would reasonably be eliminated, and she could have simply handed over the phone.
Nathanael
@The Moar You Know: ” If a kid is trying to leave campus, well, the school is legally responsible for their welfare ”
This archaic doctrine needs to be abolished. It’s used as a bullshit excuse for school officials to terrorize and imprison children (and yes, “terrorize and imprison” is the correct terminology for some of the crap I’ve seen), with no regard for the safety or welfare of the children.
Mnemosyne
@Spider-Dan:
Actually, our fundamental difference is that when the kid did not immediately agree to hand over the phone, I think the teacher and the AP should have continued to talk calmly to her, while you think that having two adult men hold the kid down and physically take the phone from her was the best next step.
I also notice you didn’t answer my question. If a co-manager came into a meeting and demanded the report that you had been calmly talking to the employee about, you would consider that to be completely appropriate and professional behavior by that co-manager, correct?
grandpa john
@Cervantes: the truth is that everyone that works in a school is also a sometimes social worker, unless they are sociopaths
grandpa john
@Cervantes: Yeah I had that point brought home to me one time when I accidentally called a student by her older sisters name . She was very quick to correct me.
grandpa john
@C: Exactly, the AP used the cops to do the job she was hired for and paid to do. It seems as if a lot of folks here don’t realize that schools have not always had resource cops and in those days discipline was part of the job description for teachers and administrators ,first the teacher then the AP in charge of discipline, then the principal and finally the school board. But you can bet that in those days grabbing or physical assault or handcuffing would never have occured
grandpa john
@Spider-Dan: Wow, a hell of a lot of conjecture and assumptions, none of which have any factual support. of course that makes it easy to justify your your opinion of what really happened doesn’t it
grandpa john
@Nathanael: in many places it has already been abolished
Yahzi
@Wag: Any escalation? So if the cops had shot her to death, it’s her fault?
You have made a classic attribution error. Because the girl was not 100% compliant, she is to be denied 100% of her rights. In your binary world, one is either good (and thus always obeys all authority regardless of circumstance) or evil (and thus always deserving of the most extreme sanction). In your world civil disobedience does not exist, nor does the principal of “the punishment must fit the crime.”
It is possible for the girl to be wrong and at the same time for the police to be wrong. There is no justification for them resorting to the kind of force that would get you, a private citizen, a permanent record as a sex offender.
My Truth Hurts
@The Moar You Know:
Fvck you and your wife. No one asked her to be a teacher.
My Truth Hurts
Some of you are so caught up on discipline and punishment. Its sickening. We live in a sick country. I thank god every day she never burdened me with children so that I don’t have to deal with idiot administrators and peanut galleries more interested in punishment than development. What an uphill battle it must be nowadays to raise a thoughtful, intelligent and well adjusted child. No matter what I did right there would be 14 other adults in their life doing everything wrong and destroying my progress. Adults abuse children every god damn day. At home, in school, in public. They mess with kids, they condescend to them, they ridicule them, they “punish” them for being young, immature and inexperienced. I’m 41 years old and I fucking hate adults. They all ruin children and turn them into shitty adults with more issues than Time magazine. Yuck.
Spider-Dan
@Mnemosyne:
Well, I think your work analogy is fundamentally flawed; child students are not remotely similar to lower-level employees, and an assistant principal would normally be considered a superior of a classroom teacher. But to answer your question, if I was a low-level supervisor, and I had a problem employee that was keeping me and several dozen other employees from performing our jobs because I had to try to convince them to follow company regulations, I would say that one of my superiors stepping in and telling me to get back to work while they dealt with the problem employee is not only appropriate, it’s recommended.
In this case, having the teacher and the AP standing around in a hall trying to convince a student to follow the rules is bad division of labor. The AP was completely correct in taking over this situation and sending the teacher back to class, and the student herself eliminated the option of continued discussion when she decided to walk away from and ignore the AP. You have again claimed that the “next step” from student refuses to hand over phone was student is tackled and held down by police, when in fact the actual steps were student refuses to hand over phone to teacher in class -> student refuses to hand over phone to AP in hallway -> student ignores and walks away from AP -> student refuses to hand over phone to school police.
Cervantes
@My Truth Hurts:
Yes, your truth does hurt.
Be well.
Cervantes
@Spider-Dan:
Assuming those were the “actual steps,” do you see a problem?
chopper
@slag:
It should be more of a ‘call the parents’ situation. Unfortunately, if they call the parents and say ‘come pick your kid up. Where? Oh, I dunno, she left. She’s in town somewhere tho’ there’s probably going to be a lawsuit.
chopper
@grandpa john:
Unfortunately not at this particular school.
chopper
@My Truth Hurts:
Yes, your truth does hurt. Fuck that hard-working frustrated teacher who deals with way too much shit. Fuck her, man. Who the fuck does she think she is? Someone of value?
Mnemosyne
@Spider-Dan:
Wow. You must have really high turnover in your department if you think there’s no need to treat your employees with respect and it’s okay for your co-manager to interrupt your conversations and make demands of them.
C
@Spider-Dan: So a teen walking away from administrators is not remotely reasonable but assaulting a minor is in your mind? wtf is wrong with you?
As far as the cops things goes, so what if they were assigned to the school, they are still official law enforcement officers not some rentacop. You know they are actual cops. It is unreasonable for the cops to be used to enforce non-laws, you know school codes. This is the job of the administrators of the school.
Why do you feel that the cops need to be their to handle disciplinary issues that the school is responsible for, the cops are not , nor should be there to enforce school rules, they are there to enforce actual laws, you know ones that actually have the weight of the law behind them, not school codes, which, if broken, are not against the law.
am
@Ella in New Mexico:
Don’t post and drink you dope.
Spider-Dan
@Mnemosyne:
You keep trying to force this analogy as if the student was late turning in a book report and the AP jumped in. The student was refusing to comply with a schoolwide regulation, to the point where the class was stopped just so that the teacher could deal with her. So to continue with your ill-fitting analogy, it is completely appropriate for my superior to interrupt a conversation between me and my subordinate, when that subordinate’s refusal (not “lack of compliance,” but point-blank refusal) to follow a straightforward company regulation is keeping me and everyone else under me from doing our jobs. In such a situation, I would expect that problem employee to be put on a fast track towards termination, but I’m sure you would agree expulsion is not the answer here.
@C:
You seem to be making an argument that HISD police should not exist, but they DO exist and their job is to deal with precisely the kinds of incidents that the AP called them for. School teachers and administrators should not be forcibly confiscating items, nor should they be forcibly escorting children to detention or to the office for their parents to come pick them up. In the case of a defiant student who ignores instructions and walks away from administrators, either some physical force is going to be involved, or you’re going to let them freely roam the halls at their leisure.
C
@Spider-Dan: So in your mind its perfectly ok to use force? So the next time im walking down the street and you prevent me from doing something in a timely fashion its ok for me to use force to make you comply? No it is not, that is illegal, its called assault, which is what the police did to this student. Which law gives the police the right to enforce school codes and regulations?
Spider-Dan
@C:
If I were driving down the street, and a private citizen forced me to the side of the road, then forcibly took my car from me, that would be criminal conversion and/or robbery… but police officers do this all the time if someone is driving on a suspended license. If a private citizen suspected me of theft, then forcibly bound me, and took me away against my will, that would be called criminal assault and kidnapping… but police officers do this all the time when called for alleged shoplifters.
Society entrusts police with powers above and beyond those of regular citizens. You seem to be making some sort of anarcho-libertarian argument against the concept of police.
C
@Spider-Dan: In those instances that you use, there are actual laws that give the police the power to do those things, there are no such laws in place that would justify cops to use force to make student comply with school rules and codes, once again I ask for which law you think gives the police the right to do this within a school.
Spider-Dan
@C:
In most jurisdictions of the U.S., during the school day, the school is responsible for their students, and can be held liable for them if anything happens to them. So, much as there is no specific law that says that a child must obey their parent, there may be no specific law that says that a student must obey administrators.
That being said: I would imagine that upon the creation of the HISD police, there were laws passed that gave them specific power within school grounds. Am I to understand that if I can find and cite said laws, your objections are nullified and you have no problem with this story?
Is your objection to this conflict really as simple as “it should have been school administrators physically detaining this child instead of school police”? Or are you also saying that you believe there is no provision in Texas law for school administrators to physically detain students, either?
C
@Spider-Dan: Not sure where to even start with your last comment. First you say:
“So, much as there is no specific law that says that a child must obey their parent, there may be no specific law that says that a student must obey administrators.”
Thats been my point there is no law. Therefore using the police to uphold school rules is in this sense un-lawful, meaning there is no basis in law.
Then you say:
“That being said: I would imagine that upon the creation of the HISD police, there were laws passed that gave them specific power within school grounds.”
First off your assumptions are not the same as facts, and until you can point at specific laws, its not worth debating. Secondly, no one, not even the police have any right to demand you hand over property with out legal justification, and in this particular case, there is no legal justification, only a school rule. This would make it a 4th amendment violation in that they had no legal justification to force the student to comply and give up her property.
Then you say:
“Is your objection to this conflict really as simple as “it should have been school administrators physically detaining this child instead of school police”? Or are you also saying that you believe there is no provision in Texas law for school administrators to physically detain students, either?”
My position, which I have argued over and over and over again is, neither the school, nor the police have any right to physically restrain or hit, or even touch a student, there are laws that prohibit this. (except in extreme cases where doing so would prevent harm to others which does not apply in this case) Like assault and battery statutes, among others. Can the student do the same then? Can she detain the teacher or AP physically for any reason? I doubt it, the cops would be there and charge her for assault at the very least.
Your arguments seem to boil down to, force is the only way to make anyone comply, so if you ask them to do something, and they dont, then what ever force is necessary is ok. This is the wrong mindset, especially when dealing with minors in a school setting. That kind of mindset is what so many of the worst human right violators used to justify everything, from mass murder to rape, to torture.
This is why it is so wrong to accept and condone the police to be used to enforce things that are not based in law. If it becomes acceptable to use force to gain compliance for school rules, how long before the police show up at your work to force you to work overtime, or to make sure you only use the bathroom on your breaks? Under your reasoning, you would have no problem with cops showing up and using force against you if you violated one of your workplace rules. I do not think you can be arguing for a more un-American ideal than to allow the police to use force to gain compliance whenever someone doesnt follow whatever arbitrary rule someone else makes up. It would be like if your boss had a rule saying you cannot bring your phone to work, and you did one day because, maybe your wife, or kids or something were sick and you needed to wait to hear from the doctor, but your boss said no you cant, but you did anyway, then instead of being fired, or suspended, he calls the cops in, who show up and beat you until you give up your property. Would that be acceptable to you?
C
Those arguing that the use of force here is justifiable are scaring the hell out of me right now. Add in the “Stand your ground laws” or “castle doctrine” to this mindset and frightens me even more. Then add on to that the militarization of the police, and the mindset that the use of force is ok in pretty much any situation, and Im scared out of my mind. This is how fascism takes hold people. When you allow the use of force to gain compliance for anything deemed against the rules (again not laws but rules non-binding in law), how long before it is used to justify force to make you think a certain way? This is where this mindset will and is leading us. I imagine the same people are ok with the NSA, constitution free zones ( https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130212/02045321947/do-you-live-constitution-free-zone-us.shtml ), and free speech zones ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone ) which are all part of this mindset that allows authorities to subvert our constitutional rights. Can you all not see what is happening right before your eyes in this country? We are not the land of the free, with liberty and justice for all anymore. We are the land of the Authoritarians, torturers and justice for those who can buy it. Yeah I will admit its a little bit of a leap from a school in Texas to the national issues at stake, but the mindset that accepts what happened to this girl, is the same mindset that accepts everything else. Please, I beg of you, understand that if we continue to accept the use of force to force compliance for things as trivial as the issue in this school in Texas, we are bound to loose our liberty, because the next time someone uses force to gain compliance to their wishes it just might be you.
Spider-Dan
C, I am forced to wonder why you seem to sanction the use of physical force to deal with shoplifters and people without valid driver licenses, yet are adamantly against the use of force if an unruly student wants to roam the halls unchecked and ignore school administrators. Is the use of physical force somehow less of an affront to adults?
The reason why I mentioned Texas law is that while I could look up the pertinent code, it’s a waste of my time if you’re just going to turn around and say, “well, I don’t care if that is the law, they shouldn’t do it,” in exactly the same way that you continue to insist that HISD police should not have been called to deal with this unruly student when that is the primary reason for creating a school police unit.
Finally, given your impassioned pleas for Liberty, I am curious: do you believe there is a law that says that schools may confiscate personal property from students? If not, isn’t the illegal conversion of personal property the most egregious part of this incident? I would think that you would have serious concerns about a school seizing students’ phones without even so much as a warrant.
C
@Spider-Dan:
Again with the misstating my positions. You seem to like to hang positions on me in order to construct a straw-man argument. I do not sanction the use of force to make people comply. Its just with the student its even more appalling. Also, since what the police did to the student has no basis in law, meaning there is no law that give authority to the police to seize the phone, much less to do so with force, there is however laws against shoplifting, and refusing arrest.
The primary reason in creating a school police unit is to uphold the law, not school rules. Where do you get the idea that they were established to violate students constitutional rights, as in using force to deal with lawful actions, like using a cell phone and refusing to give up property to a third party, both are perfectly legal actions. So is walking the halls of the school (if your a student), farting, talking, chewing gum, and other things deemed disruptive in class, all legal actions, in which police have no legal standard to get involved. It was also created so the local police can establish a repertoire with the student community. You seem to think the only way to keep order is through the use of force.
Please define unruly as well, because the student in question does not fit my definition of unruly.
I would say what they did is wrong if you did find a law that says they can do what they did, but since I am pretty sure one does not exist (since it would be unconstitutional) its a moot point anyway. Since you claim you could find one, but didnt bother, its a cop out on your part.
I do have a serious problem with the school thinking it can seize property, which is why i think the fact the AP called the cops to seize the phone one of the most egregious parts of this whole incident, besides the fact they used force to do it, which is the worst part.
I do not like nor agree with the police being able to use force for compliance, however, I do understand that in some situations it is called for, this instance is not one of those, in fact its about as far away from one of those instances you can get. One of the most alarming things happening in our society right now, is how the police are using force to gain compliance for everything, if you do not immediately obey any command by the police you are likely to be forced through some form of physical pain compliance to acquiesce to their demands. This is why when I see it pop up in instances like this I find it so alarming and terrifying.
Spider-Dan
@C:
So is it fair to say that you believe that this entire incident started with the school’s illegal attempt to seize the personal property of the student? I don’t want to “misstate your position,” so please clarify.
I would also like to know if you believe there is an existing law that provides for a school to prohibit a student from using a legally-owned phone.
C
@Spider-Dan: I do believe that the school has no legal right to take the phone. I do understand however that it may be in the best interest of the students to not use their phone in class, which is why they wish to prevent students from using it during class. I think the idea that the school ransoms the phone for 15$ horribly wrong also. There are no laws that exist to prevent anyone from doing anything that is lawful. The use of the phone falls into this category. This is why this whole incident is so terribly wrong, because there was no laws being broke, yet the cops used force to make the student comply with a rule, not a law. There is a huge difference between the two. One has the weight of the law behind it, one does not.
Why is it you never want to answer any of the questions I pose to you? You say you can provide a law that gives the police the right to do unconstitutional things, like what they did in this instance, yet you have not done so, and I have asked everyone for that.
I posed to you this:
“This is why it is so wrong to accept and condone the police to be used to enforce things that are not based in law. If it becomes acceptable to use force to gain compliance for school rules, how long before the police show up at your work to force you to work overtime, or to make sure you only use the bathroom on your breaks? Under your reasoning, you would have no problem with cops showing up and using force against you if you violated one of your workplace rules. I do not think you can be arguing for a more un-American ideal than to allow the police to use force to gain compliance whenever someone doesnt follow whatever arbitrary rule someone else makes up. It would be like if your boss had a rule saying you cannot bring your phone to work, and you did one day because, maybe your wife, or kids or something were sick and you needed to wait to hear from the doctor, but your boss said no you cant, but you did anyway, then instead of being fired, or suspended, he calls the cops in, who show up and beat you until you give up your property. Would that be acceptable to you?”
I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
and this one:
So a teen walking away from administrators is not remotely reasonable but assaulting a minor is in your mind?
and this:
Why do you feel that the cops need to be their to handle disciplinary issues that the school is responsible for?
I would like you to answer these, for it may be of use to help me better understand your position and arguments.
Spider-Dan
@C:
In order:
– I thought they were rhetorical questions
– minor students in school are not comparable to employees at work
– no, but as above, it’s not comparable: I can quit a job but minor students are already compelled by law to attend school
– no one in this scenario committed the crime of assault
– I don’t want schools evaluating administrators’ job performance based on their ability to enforce security; I’d rather have them evaluate security guards and/or police on that metric, so I prefer that the administrators not perform those tasks
You say you believe the school has no legal right to seize the phone of the students. There is a word for when you illegally seize another person’s property through the use of force: robbery. Using your logic, one must conclude that the school police has committed felony strongarm robbery, and that this school regularly commits criminal conversion and/or extortion (in the form of recovery fees). (I also asked if you believe there is an existing law that provides for a school to prohibit use of a legally owned phone, which you did not answer.)
Let me sum up my problem with your position writ large: it is rather easy to describe childhood in terms that closely resemble legalized slavery. For example:
– forced labor without compensation
– unilateral restrictions on freedom of travel, freedom of association, freedom of speech
– legal corporal punishment for disobedience
– all of this in exchange for a legal requirement to provide room and board
Are American children having their constitutional rights egregiously infringed, in violation of the 13th Amendment? Of course not. Children have severely limited personal rights in our society, and these rights are assigned to their caretakers (usually parents, but during the school day, at least partially to the school) in order to protect them.
So fundamentally, I disagree with your highly litigious approach to the rights of children at school. Children have substantially fewer rights than adults in every aspect of their life, and if you object to that, you can make a much more significant impact by starting at the child’s home, not their school.
Marc Brammer
@Wag: at what point did anybof this need to involve the police!?! Srsly WTF.
Procopius
@Roger Moore: His maker is in charge everywhere. He just appointed Lucifer as a subcontractor. I’m thinking of a song I heard recently, “I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you.” I don’t think “rascal” is really sufficient, but this is a family blog, isn’t it?
C
@Spider-Dan: So you wont answer the question because you dont feel its comparable? And you dont because shes a minor and that somehow makes her a second class citizen then with diminished rights? So what if instead of 14 she was 18, would that suddenly change her rights in your mind? So because you can quit your job, its not comparable? This is a cop out and you know it, you just dont want to answer the question simply because you would have to admit what happened in this case was wrong. And since you refuse to argue in good faith this will be my last post arguing with you.
You also prefer that the job traditionally done by the AP now be done by the police?
No wonder you keep arguing with me, you want to turn schools into a prison system.
So because you think that because she is a minor she doesnt get full constitutional protection? This is wrong she does have every right that any adult has. You cannot force a child to do labor, there are laws against that, while parents have the ability to restrict movement,associations and speech, they are still protected rights under the constitutions, and are not limited simply because of being a minor, and child abuse laws make it illegal to use physical abuse to punish a child. Parents do have a legal responsibility to care and protect children, as well as a moral one, this will lead to parents exerting control over their children, but this very different from police or school violating her rights.
When I said the school had no legal right to take the phone, that was answering the question if there was an existing law to allow them to do so, since there is no legal right, there is no existing law.
So once again, the student does have every right you or me has, her being a minor doesnt not magically make her rights limited or disappear, this is ridiculous, and I really hope you do not have children, because I fear for their safety. Forced labor, and corporal punishment. You sir are an authoritarian, your way of thinking leads us down a road to the police state faster than you can say thought police.
C
Let me be perfectly clear, the cops actions here were illegal, they violated the students 4th amendment rights. There is no law that makes any of the students actions illegal, therefore the cops have no legal authority to do this.
Spider-Dan
@C:
You asked me, “How long before the police show up at your work to force you to work overtime?” The answer to that question is never, because minor students in school are not comparable to employees at work. Furthermore, it is rather absurd for you to ask questions like “if x, how long until y” and then complain that a clearly rhetorical question is not being answered. The question “how long?” should be answered in units of time, so… 3 years? 25 days? 15 minutes? That kind of question is not worth answering in the first place, which is why I originally didn’t answer it.
In point of fact, a 14-year-old has significantly diminished rights compared to an 18-year-old. A 14-year-old may not vote, may not work a full-time job, may not consent to sex, etc. Furthermore, it should be patently obvious that if you change this scenario from a 14-year-old in high school to an 18-year-old in college, the outcome would be drastically different: the college professor would simply eject the student from the class and let them go wherever they want, which is not an option for a high school teacher. This is the difference between adults and children.
Rephrasing forced, unpaid labor as “chores” does not change the fact that it is literally forced, unpaid labor. Spankings are still legal in nearly every jurisdiction of the United States. Restricted movement, association, and speech are rights violations when applied to adults, but legally protected abilities of parents. Children do not have the same rights as adults, and your own statements acknowledge this fact.
You still have not answered the question as to which existing law empowers schools to prohibit students from using their phones in class. Or listening to music, or playing video games, or watching a movie, or any other action that an adult may take in their own home.
Because any school regulation must have force of law behind it in order to be valid, right?
C
@Spider-Dan: Ok so now you are again misstating things. This was the question, the rest of it was context to set up the question:
It would be like if your boss had a rule saying you cannot bring your phone to work, and you did one day because, maybe your wife, or kids or something were sick and you needed to wait to hear from the doctor, but your boss said no you cant, but you did anyway, then instead of being fired, or suspended, he calls the cops in, who show up and beat you until you give up your property. Would that be acceptable to you?”
I was 18 and in high school so jumping to collage is not applicable here.
Just because parents can exert some control over their children does not mean they do not have the same protected rights of adults. There is a huge difference between what a parent can do and what the State can do. It is illegal for the state to violate anyone’s right including children. Again what the police did is unconstitutional, because they represent the State, whereas the parents are not bound by the same legal restrictions.
When it comes to parents, the parents have certain rights which allows them more control over their children, since the parents are liable for the child’s actions. The State, in this case the school and the police, are bound by law, and have restrictions place on them on how they can deal with any citizen, as outlined in the constitution. There is a huge difference between what a parent can do and what a public official can do when it comes to children. Parents are allowed to enforce rules on children, Police are allowed to enforce laws on children, but they are fundamentally different in nature. Parents who enforce rules on children are not legally bound to follow the constitution where as the police and the school are. This is the difference. Do you not understand there is a difference here between parents and state officials?
Again i have answered this question multiple times there are no laws in place to restrict lawful activities, like the use of a phone. how many times do I have say this. In order for the police to act, it must have the force of law, otherwise with out the force of law behind it, it by definition is un-lawful. So once again there is a HUGE difference between laws and rules. What is so hard to understand about that. The police do not have any authority to uphold school rules, only LAWS. Their actions here are not lawful, as I have said many times, there is no law that this student broke. It would seem that you are arguing that any rule has the same force as law, which is simply not true. Do you understand the difference between what is law and what is a rule? The difference is the law is backed by the government, rules are not, there is no legal authority under the our system of law here for the police to uphold a rule. There must be legal authority for the cops to act, and in this case there is absolutely none. NONE. No law was broken here by the student, but the cops did break the law here. There will be a lawsuit over this, and she will win, just you wait and see, the courts will agree with me here that the police violated this students rights.
To reiterate here, this isnt about if the rule the school has here is valid, the argument here is that the use of law enforcement to enforce this is not valid, as I must point out again, rules are not bound by law, and cops cannot enforce anything that is not bound by law. There has to be a law in effect that give the police a lawful right to act, in this case there is no law, therefore no legal right for the cops to act.
Spider-Dan
@C:
I already answered that question: “no, but as above, it’s not comparable.”
If you were 18 and still in HS, you were there by your own will and could have legally walked out (read: dropped out) any time you wanted if you did not care for the school’s regulations, unlike this child. Again, this is the difference between adults and children.
It is most certainly a law that the school is responsible for a 14-year-old student on school grounds, and a student ignoring administrators and walking away is appropriately addressed by law enforcement (to bring this student back into supervision of school authorities). So then, should we conclude that the school police should have held her down while the AP took the phone away? Or have you made up your mind as to whether or not this school may enforce illegal, rights-violating regulations that restrict students’ ability to use and keep legally purchased electronics at their leisure?
C
Its funny how you keep asserting that children do not have the same protected rights that adults do under the law. The law applies the same to all. If its unconstitutional for the cops to show up at your work and take away your phone, the same applies to this student here. There maybe special set of laws that are in place that governs the treatment of children, like the restriction on sex, voting and driving, but again, those are laws that have the force of the State behind them, whereas the rules made in school are not legally binding. So while a police officer can use the weight of law to uphold those restrictions, they have no legal right to uphold school rules, is it that hard to understand the difference between a law and a school rule? The are very, very very different. The cops have no authority at all to act in this situation, the cops cannot enforce things that are not law, why cant you understand that?
There is no law that allows the cops to detain a person who has done no illegal thing. Again what law give the cops the authority to stop someone from doing something that is legal? you keep saying there is a law, but there is not. How many times do i have to say this, the school can enforce its rules, through suspension, detention, and expulsion, but the cops cannot be used to enforce them. Again a school rule is not bound by law, meaning the cops have no legal authority to enforce them. Until you can point out a law that does, which you cannot because that law would be unconstitutional, your argument lacks merit.
And again I will point out that school has no legal authority to confiscate anything legal from a student, and yes I do see the confiscation of the cell phone as an illegal act. Again there is no legal authority here, everything done here is considered extra-legal, meaning outside of our legal system, because as I have said so many times before, a rule is not a law.
Spider-Dan
It seems that you now concede that children have different rights under the law than adults do (specifically: “like the restriction on sex, voting and driving”). We are in agreement on this subject.
Another difference between adults and children is that children are required by law to attend school (be it public, private, or home schooling). Public schools have many regulations (e.g. you may not use phones in class) that are not codified in law.
The argument that the student’s rights were violated by physical detainment by police (but would not have been violated if detained by, say, school-employed security guards) is so pedantic as to be meaningless. Your objections would not be resolved by having the school police in this case wearing security guard uniforms, nor would they be resolved by the AP tackling the girl. So let’s focus on the substantive issues; it’s a waste of time to discuss whether, say, $15 is too high of a fee.
Your substantive point seems to be that the school has no authority to confiscate the phone in the first place. My rebuttal is that they have exactly as much authority to confiscate the phone as they do to prohibit its usage in class.
C
They are not different rights, there are however different laws that govern children and adults, simply because we understand that children do not have the benefit of experience that adults do. This is not to say they have different rights, this is to say we have a different set of laws we use when dealing with children, the children still have all the applicable constitutional rights that adults do. To be clear what is a restriction under the law, is not the same as a constitutional right. And no restriction under the law can violate the constitutional rights of anyone.
you say:
The argument that the student’s rights were violated by physical detainment by police (but would not have been violated if detained by, say, school-employed security guards) is so pedantic as to be meaningless.
This is you again misstating my position as I have numerous times said, and let me be very clear here, neither the cops nor the school have any legal authority or right to physically detain, or assault anyone. What I did say is the cops should not have been involved and it is the AP’s job, the one she was hired to do, to handle disciplinary actions, but those do not, and cannot include physical detainment or even touching the child in any way. This is something that every school administrator already knows. Which is probably why she called in the cops to do it, under the misguided idea that they can physically detain the child, which they cannot either, unless, once again I must point out, the student was engaged in illegal activity, which as we have gone over, she was not. Everything done by the student was with in what is considered lawful activity. Its a rights violation by the police to physically take her cell.
There is no legal binding right for the school to restrict any lawful activity. There is however a reason they may wish to prevent students from using the phone or other activities, but these are not the same as a law, there is not force of law behind the school restriction, and these restrictions can only be handled by the school through the use of disciplinary actions, such as detention, suspension and expulsion, as well as contacting the parents. They cannot however use force to make the student comply with any of these things, why is this so hard for you to understand, i just dont get it. The school cannot enforce their rules with the use of the law, for their rules are not laws.
No one has the right to use force in this situation, not the school, not the cops, the only ones that would have any right to use a small amount of force (like say grabbing the students hand and leading her somewhere, but not more than that, for then it would become assault and abuse) would be her parents or legal guardians, and in this case the school, while they are legally responsible for the students in their care, they do not have the same legal standing in regard to the student as her parents or legal guardian does. To illustrate this point, if a child was hurt at school, the school cannot authorize any medical procedures, this would be up to the parents or legal guardian. This is because the school, maybe be liable for what happens to the student, but they are not the students guardian.
I never once said or even implied that the AP should have used force instead of the cops, for it would have been almost as bad as the cops doing it, its worse with the cops because the cops are abusing their authority in this situation. Your repeated attempts to apply positions on me so you can attack them leads me to believe that you do not have any clue what you are arguing against me for, as I am wondering the same. My only guess here is that you are an authoritarian and totally agree with using force to gain compliance in any situation, which mean no matter how hard I try to reason with you I will fail.
Once again I ask you do you understand the difference between a rule made by the school and a law created by the Government? It is obvious you dont understand the distinction here. So I will try to explain it again. First a rule has no legal standing in the court, it is unenforceable through our legal system. A law however is. This is the difference. With a law, the police can enforce within our legal system, and the law has standing in a court, whereas a rule is outside of the legal system and there is no way to enforce those with our legal system, nor can you use the courts to enforce them. This is something you seem to be missing. I am unsure if I can explain it any better than that. This is why what the police did was so wrong, it has no basis in law, so therefore becomes un-lawful. In this case it was a 4th amendment violation, illegal seizure, as well as assault, and I would say armed robbery as well, but I imagine it would be hard to prosecute that, as the courts and the DA tend to give cops lots of room to break the law, most of the time with impunity. Again I can guarantee that the cops and the school will loose their case in a court of law, because there is no law that they can cite to give them the authority to do what they did. Again see where I wrote about the difference between law and a school rule, they are no where near the same, especially within our legal system.
Spider-Dan
You repeatedly reference “rights” and “law,” yet casually dismiss them when they become inconvenient.
I reiterate: there are many legal rights that adults have and children do not; you have already listed some of them in this thread. One of these rights is freedom from compulsory schooling, which is relevant to the subject at hand.
If you continue to deny that there is any meaningful difference between the rights of adults and children, then we cannot even agree on a basic foundation from which to start a discussion. If you consider confiscating a phone from a student who was using it in class to be “armed robbery,” we are unresolvably far apart on the facts.
C
@Spider-DanThere are laws, there are constitutional guaranteed rights, and there are rules imposed by the school. When It comes to constitutional rights, no law can undermine those. This is the difference that you seem to miss. Again there is no law against using or possessing a phone within a school, there is no constitutional right of the school or its officials or the police to take someones phone. There is however the constitutional right of the student which protects hers from unlawful seizures of property as laid out in the 4th amendment of the constitution. This is where your insistence of saying that children are treated differently under the law, is failing to move me, I am not talking about common law, i am talking about constitutional rights which are above common law. Just because minors do have more restrictions on them, (because under law, minors are understood to not have the knowledge or the experience to represent themselves properly does not mean they lack the same protections from the constitution that we do, those rights are immutable even for minors, and no law can take any right enshrined by the constitution away, I am not arguing that in common-law they are treated differently, you still cannot violate their constitutional rights.) does not give the police the authority to take any legal property away from anyone, including children and there is certainly no authority or right to do so through force. I think you seem to think constitutional rights are the same as common law, and they are not. This misunderstanding is the basis for your arguments.
So again, because there is no lawful reason for the cops to take said property (4th amendment protection) and they did so with force while armed, this does become a form of armed robbery. Just why do you think the police have the right to take someone, any ones, legal property through force, is ok and justifiable, there are not only laws against this, but it is an constitutional right that is granted to every man women and child in this country, and no law can be passed to circumvent this, as it would be unconstitutional. Minors all across the country have taken schools to court and won because of constitutional violations, most of which were 1st amendment violations, which I point out to you in support of my common law vs. constitutional rights argument, Also as an example of how minors are afforded the protection of the constitution, even though you seem to claim they are not.
Pleas explain how I “…repeatedly reference “rights” and “law,” yet casually dismiss them when they become inconvenient.”
Let me reiterate this again. There are rights under common law, which I will admit children are treated differently under, as I said because under our common law we understand that children do not posses the ability to understand and navigate the legal system (not that adults do neither though). There are also rights under the constitution which children are NOT treated differently under, and no law can trample those rights. So therefore there is no legal standing at all for the police to confiscate any personal property that is not linked to, or involved in, or evidence of illegal activity. This is why this is wrong, and this is why it was illegal. Can you understand there is a difference between law and constitutional rights? Can you understand that no law can undo any constitutional right? Do you understand the difference between what is lawful for a parent to do and what is lawful for the State to do. ( the state in this case being the cops and the AP, both who represent government entities, which are not only bound by common-law but also bound by constitutional law, where as parents are not.) It is these extremely important distinctions that your are either unaware of or deliberately ignoring them.
C
@Spider-Dan: I think I can clarify what I am trying to get across, and perhaps you can understand what I am trying to argue here. The Constitution, all the Amendments, and the Bill of Rights are restrictions upon the State, and its actors, public servants, to which both the AP and the police fall under, and common law are restrictions upon the citizens. Nothing the State or its Actors can do, can contradict any right for anyone which is enshrined by the Constitution and its additions, as this would be un-constitutional.
Think of it like this, a PRIVATE entity is not bound by the Constitution, which is why your place of work can put restrictions on you, like prohibiting you from exercising your free speech. A GOVERNMENT entity is bound by the Constitution and cannot prohibit you from exercising your constitutional rights. This is what I think you do not understand, and unless you can grasp this distinction you never will.
So again rights under common law are different than rights under Constitutional law, as Constitutional law is restrictions on the Government, and common law is restrictions upon the citizenry. I hope this makes sense to you.