Deaths and Injuries in Police Custody

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Andrea

I do not read that article the way you appear to have read it.

No one made the officer throw the girl across the room. He is at fault. Not anyone else. Doesn't matter what she did to have the officer called (short of physical violence on another), nor what another student did, the response was excessive. The officer was abusive, and should be fired and charged.

Of course the officer should be fired and charged with assault. It certainly was not Officer Ben Fields first rodeo, he has a history of being abusive, so in my mind that makes a host of people, his superior officers, the entire police department and whoever else turned a blind eye to his violent behavior, accountable for what he does. I don't know what article you are referring to that you read that I took a different way, but this is the article I posted:

South Carolina Teen Who Filmed School Cop's Assault is Arrested for "Disturbing Schools"
This story keeps getting worse.

By Adam Johnson / AlterNet

October 27, 2015

UPDATE: This has gotten much worse. Niya Kenny, 18, who filmed the now infamous arrest has been arrested herself for "disturbing schools." She's out on $1000 bail.

WLTX reports that Kenny was trying to "stand up for her friend" when she filmed the assault, telling Loren Thomas of WLTX, "I was crying, screaming and crying like a baby. I was in disbelief." Both Kenny and her mother are understandably skeptical as to why she was arrested for "disturbing schools."

"But looking at the video, who was really disturbing schools?" Kenny's mother told WLTX. "Was it my daughter or the officer who came into the classroom and did that to the young girl?"
http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...urbing-schools

I was being sarcastic when I said "Well they discovered who was the cause of the incident at that school in SC. It wasn't the cop who assaulted that young girl, it wasn't the teacher who stood there and watched, it wasn't even the student who apparently brought this violence on herself by not following orders and maintaining the most calmly non aggressive way of sitting I've ever seen. Surprisingly all this was caused by the student who filmed it."

I was also trying to point out that it's insane to spend time trying to cover up incidents like this by intimidating the people who bring them to the attention of the public, as though if no one sees the abusive incident it did not happen. Thus the reference to if a tree falls in the woods.

Instead those with the power should be doing something about the individuals who perpetrate this type of violence. To me it is particularly despicable when those people whose job it is to protect and serve, instead harm.

Also just for clarity's sake when I said "the student who apparently brought this violence on herself by not following orders and maintaining the most calmly non aggressive way of sitting I've ever seen", I was once again trying to be funny (when will I learn that while I may be a lot of things, funny ain't one of them). I find it ludicrous to imagine that someone sitting as passively as that student was sitting when that police officer assaulted her could ever be seen deserving that kind of treatment. I don't doubt she was being difficult and that's why the officer was called. That's a problem in and of itself. Why when a student is not presenting as violent is it ever necessary to call for police back up? When are teenagers not being difficult? It's their job. (trying to be funny again). What I mean is that as long as a student is not being violent no one has a right to attack them the way that police officer did. There are plenty of ways to deal with someone who won't leave when you ask them to. I have worked with difficult populations through the years, including troubled adolescents, and I've found that it is way too acceptable to deal with teenagers aggressively, much more acceptable than with many other populations. I see that attitude at the route of the problem although at this point it has gone beyond that and needs to be dealt with as a crime. But it would also be a good idea to examine this inherent belief that aggression and violence is acceptable in dealing with non violent students. And we haven't touched on the reality of how black students are going to be treated more aggressively than white students in any given scenario. We need to take systemically sanctioned violence out of schools. In this incident it was ridiculous to drag that girl like that. She was asked to leave after refusing to hand over her phone and she refused according to what I read. That hardly merits that kind of violence. In my mind if you want to separate someone and they are being passively resistant, perhaps you could consider moving everyone else? But I think I digress here.

Anyway back to the issue, this is not the first time attempts have been made to punish people for filming crimes.