{"id":95341,"date":"2015-10-30T07:05:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T13:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=95341"},"modified":"2015-10-30T07:06:11","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T13:06:11","slug":"shocking-south-carolina-video-no-isolated-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2015\/10\/shocking-south-carolina-video-no-isolated-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Shocking South Carolina video no isolated case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wUMJW62kW-8?rel=0\" width=\"771\" height=\"434\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>COMMENTARY:<\/strong> Captured on video, a white South Carolina school police officer violently tosses a black student out of her desk, drags her across the floor and cuffs her as she\u2019s sprawled on the floor. Captured on video. That\u2019s key. Because across the country, questionable police actions at schools are mostly a hidden phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>Nationwide, in incidents that rarely get publicly aired, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/2015\/04\/10\/17089\/virginia-tops-nation-sending-students-cops-courts-where-does-your-state-rank\" target=\"_blank\">thousands of students are also getting arrested, ticketed, interrogated and searched by police officers<\/a>, often in connection with minor indiscretions or allegations they were disruptive.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This story is part of juvenile justice\u00a0coverage from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Center for Public Integrity<\/a>, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative media organization in Washington, D.C. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/juvenile-justice\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a> to read more stories in this investigation.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Some police actions involve alarming physical altercations, with kids subdued and handcuffed. Others may be handled without much force. But law-enforcement involvement in school discipline has routinely resulted in kids \u2014 some as young as elementary school-age \u2014 summoned to court to answer charges that they committed crimes. Frequently, charges include battery or assault in connection with schoolyard fights or disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace at school \u2014 issues that some believe should be handled by school officials, not cops.<\/p>\n<p>A kid doesn\u2019t even have to be a teen for this to happen.<\/p>\n<p>As the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/2015\/04\/10\/17089\/virginia-tops-nation-sending-students-cops-courts-where-does-your-state-rank\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Public Integrity recently reported<\/a>, 11-year-old Kayleb Moon-Robinson, in Lynchburg, Virginia, was \u201cslammed\u201d down, as the sixth grader said, after a school principal asked a resource officer to stop Kayleb in a hallway because the boy walked out of class without permission.<\/p>\n<p>Kayleb is autistic. The officer told him to go the office. He didn\u2019t comply immediately. And the officer grabbed him. Kayleb struggled and used some foul language \u2014 and ended up wrestled to the floor, handcuffed and charged with felony assault on a police officer, as well as disorderly conduct.<\/p>\n<p>Other kids\u2019 cases revealed in the Center report include middle-schoolers arrested for school fights and even charged with resisting arrest. A 12-year-old girl who clenched her fist at a cop ended up with a charge of obstruction of justice.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>A growing group of judges, educators and civil-rights lawyers says that research and experience has convinced them this trend has gone too far. They say that prosecuting kids in court for low-level accusations like disorderly conduct and battery is actually backfiring; kids become stigmatized, develop records and often disengage from school.<\/p>\n<p>The risk increases that they\u2019ll progress to more serious trouble, especially if core emotional or mental-health or learning problems go unresolved or inadequately treated.<\/p>\n<p>The Obama Administration has also sounded the alarm. Officials are urging school districts \u2014 whose administrators and boards hold a lot of sway \u2014 to keep the business of routine discipline in the hands of schools and counselors, not law enforcement. Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon told the Center that disorderly conduct allegations are a \u201cred flag\u201d for her office, which can investigate school districts and withhold federal funds if kids\u2019 civil rights are violated.<\/p>\n<p>To get a sense of the national landscape, the Center <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/2015\/04\/10\/17089\/virginia-tops-nation-sending-students-cops-courts-where-does-your-state-rank\" target=\"_blank\">analyzed<\/a> national data collected from schools by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2011-12 school year. South Carolina\u2019s rate of student \u201creferrals to law enforcement\u201d \u2014 this could include arrests \u2014 was <em>not<\/em> above the national state-by-state average. The state overall came in at 5 per 1,000, compared to about 6 per 1,000 nationally.<\/p>\n<p>However, the state\u2019s numbers did show a pattern of disproportionate referrals of black students \u2014 students like the girl in the South Carolina video. Black students represented almost 36 percent of the state\u2019s public school student body, but they were 50 percent of all students referred to law enforcement. Spring Valley High School, where the video was shot, reported no arrests or referrals that year. Schools are currently sending in data to the federal education department for an updated collection that won\u2019t be released until next year, most likely.<\/p>\n<p>The video of the girl getting manhandled and arrested in Columbia, S.C. has touched a nerve. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goupstate.com\/article\/20151027\/wire\/151029781\" target=\"_blank\">reportedly asked the FBI to investigate<\/a> the officer\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to how police conduct themselves schools\u2014and what their purpose is\u2014schools are governed by a patchwork of laws and policies that differ state by state, district by district, sometimes school by school. Virginia, for one, has now launched a statewide effort to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/2015\/10\/14\/18312\/virginia-moves-forward-school-discipline-reforms\" target=\"_blank\">retrain school police.<\/a> The 2011 data the Center analyzed showed that statewide Virginia\u2019s rate of referring students to law enforcement was 16 per 1,000, the highest in the country.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/authors\/susan-ferriss\" target=\"_blank\">Ferriss<\/a> is a reporter with the Center for Public Integrity.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Center for Public Integrity stories have detailed ongoing controversies involving cops in schools across the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[234,125,203],"class_list":["post-95341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-children","tag-education","tag-law-enforcement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}