A video began spreading on social media
sites Monday afternoon of an incident that happened at Spring Valley High
School in northeast Richland County. In the recording, a female student can be
seen sitting in her chair in a classroom where several other students are
present. An officer can be seen grabbing the student out of her desk, causing
the chair to flip over. Once the student is on the ground, the officer can be
seen grabbing the student and dragging her for several feet.
The video is disturbing and…No, it is
more than disturbing. It is terrifying, unsettling, frightening and just fucked
up.
There are so many things wrong with this
video that shows, unfortunately where our society is right now. There is more
than a race issue involved in that terrible video.
Are our children
safe in school?
With my bipolar disorder and anxiety
disorder, I get really anxious. One of the things that makes me very anxious is
when my children are out of my protection. The most time they spend away from
me is when they are in school.
Recently there have been multiple school
shootings at high schools and colleges and that frightens me. It leaves me afraid
that the schools may not be equipped enough to protect my children. I try to
have faith everyday that the schools my children are attending will be vigilant
and ready to protect them.
The last thing you want is to believe
that the actually Resource police officers, teachers or anyone
in the administration would harm your child. Now, my children are well behaved and have never had any disciplinary actions taken against them. However, if they happened to be defiant or when asked to leave a classroom or require disciplinary action taken against them, I had faith that the adults that surround them would be trained and would know how to de-escalate the situation. When I see videos like this I do not feel that my children are safe in school. It worries me and makes me understand why so many parents are now determined to home school their children.
Are we teaching children
that violence is the answer?
According to Sutter Health Palo Alto
Medical Foundation and Medline Plus, Demonstrating to through teens through
words and action by adults can show teens that violence is never an acceptable
way to approach any situation. That is the only way to produce healthy and level
headed children that can learn to communicate their frustrations in other
manners.
Parents are arrested and or reported if
they are abusive or use corporal punishment on their children even if the child
is out of hand or cannot be controlled.
If we tell parents that violence is not
the answer how can we defend a resource officer in a school who attacks a defiant
child with violence. I have seen comments on social media that the child “should
have listened”, “Will learn next time not to fight back” or that “she got what
she deserved”.
We are the adults! How can we treat our children
that way and then wonder why they choose violence against each other? This treatment
of our children should not be tolerated by any one especially adults and especially
those that we believe are there to protect our children.
How can we teach our children that
violence is not the answer when we as adults are using violence to control them?
It shows that we are teaching our children one thing and showing them another.
Children will do as they see us do and not what we say.
I truly believe it is obvious that the
police in this country are not trained properly. I am sure there was a time in
our history where police were trained and understood how to de-escalate a
situation and handle things like adults. You would hope that someone that has
the capacity to use deadly force on someone would know when to and not to use
it.
Today, I believe that our police officers
lack resources and therefore they are not training police. A trained police
officer would have used force on a child as a last resort on a teenage girl in
class in front of other students. A trained
office would not have approached a 12 year old boy and shot him without evaluating
the situation. A trained officer would not have chased down an unarmed man and
shot him in the back.
Police have so much to deal with on a
daily basis. They are put into dangerous situations and training would allow
them to feel confident and be able to handle situations without panicking and
killing someone.
Force and Deadly force should be a last
resort and we in this society need to help fund the police and other institutions
so that they can train police so they can do what they are supposed to do…keep
us and our children safe.
Is there a race
element?
Of course, no matter the race of the
child, what that officer did was inexcusable and to look at that video and say “we
need to investigate what happened” and to assume the child provoked her own
assault is appalling. However, people get offended when it is said that his
reaction was partially based on the fact that the young woman was black. Can
you blame a community that has experience
violence at the hand of police from
the moment they stepped on the soil of this country to see a race element in
this situation?
To add insult to injury I have seen numerous
comments on social media that salutes the police officer for “taking her down
humanely” or she was going to end up in jail anyway. Are we seen as less than
human? Do we, including our children, deserve less than children of other
races? I do believe that race played a part in this situation. Even if that was
not what the officer intended…that has been the response since the video made its
rounds.
The University of Berkley’s Website Greater Good: the Science of a Meaningful
Life, says that “The term “empathy” is used to describe a wide range of
experiences. Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to
sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone
else might be thinking or feeling.”
It is in my opinion that a country that
considers itself to be based on Christian beliefs and values (something I
contest) lacks empathy and love for its fellow man.
In order for slavery to flourish the
people had to believe that another human being was less than human and that
rhetoric still flourish in the minds of so many in this country. We lack the
ability to empathize with the plight of others.
A child’s brain doesn’t fully mature
until the age of 25. They do not have the capacity to think like an adult when
they are teenagers in school. Of course they will be defiant and act out. We have
no clue what that child could have been going through in that moment. Any
response of violence toward a child that is not posing a dangerous threat to
the other students or is unarmed is ridiculous and reprehensible on every
level. You should lose your job and never be allowed to work in a school again.
If you can see someone assault an
unarmed child sitting at her desk and automatically think “there has to be more
to the story” you need to look in the mirror and tell the person you see
staring back at you to get their shit together.