Just a few months after the December 2012 Sandy Hook shootings, a school safety project funded by the National Rifle Association urged the arming of trained school staff to protect against future school shootings. Although many of us scoffed at this proposal, we failed to recognize that this recommendation was already being implemented in our schools with the increasing utilization of law enforcement officers. So how is the presence of these law enforcement officers affecting our schools and children? Courtesy of cell phone video taken by a student in a classroom, we witnessed in October an incident in a South Carolina high school where a white school resource office put a choke hold on an African-American student, flipped her out of her chair, and then dragged her across the floor. The 16-year-old student was later arrested for “disturbing the peace” as was the student who made the video. It is not clear what led to this ugly incident, and frankly it doesn’t really matter. The crime here is that it did happen. The executive director of the South Carolina branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Victoria Middleton, stated, “There is no justification whatsoever for treating a child like this. Regardless of the reason for the officer’s actions, such egregious use of force—against young people who are sitting in their classrooms—is outrageous. School should be a place to learn and grow, not a place to be brutalized.” This incident only highlights concerns about the placement of police or school resource officers (SROs) in our nation’s schools.
