South Carolina High School Student Dragged From Class

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by barbara

I wasn't asking my sister for her opinion on what happened in the incident we are discussing.

I was describing the situation to point out that, currently, things are different in schools than back in the day.

Please try to keep up with the discussion. 😉

You were using your sister as a source for what schools are like today, and inferring that those conditions justify Officer Slam's actions.

I believe my daughter can give me just as good insight into what it's like for teachers as your sister can. You really ought to wait and see what I find out from my daughter. Who knows?, she might agree with you. But instead you chose to discount her opinion before you even found out what it was.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Boreas

Jesus! The Tinker decision doesn't have anything to do with cops arresting a pouty little kid. It's a freedom of speech issue. It's a civil issue and has nothing to do with law enforcement.

The rest of your quote is: .... is, of course, not immunized by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech.

And it's worth noting that in Tinker the SCOTUS found for the plaintiffs against the school board.

Try again.

Precisely the point: YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT.

You entire diatribe doesn't apply, especially once the decision to arrest has been made.

Too bad.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Since you have all this excellent training and experience, can't you say whether all that risk of death or serious bodily harm was necessary good practice, or not?

Interestingly enough, I can: although it's likely to irate the masses.

Once you've decided to arrest, any risk of "death or serious bodily harm" to the arrestee is -- essentially -- meaningless if you can enunciate even the barest theory that not effecting arrest as rapidly as possible might lead to potentially increased danger for the arresting officer or surrounding civilians. That's an easy sell, here.

This guy got fired because his boss is afraid of bad publicity, not because he doesn't believe he was right. In the end, the law will protect the officer but they'll find some manner in which to exchange $$$ and do it where the local department can act all community policing. There'll be zero professional mar and the officer will be made financially whole in a closed agreement. If that doesn't occur, the Department will be financially gutted by the Union. This officer did his job.

If he wanted his job back, he could get it but -- given a payday -- who cares?

[barbara]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

You were using your sister as a source for what schools are like today, and inferring that those conditions justify Officer Slam's actions.



I believe my daughter can give me just as good insight into what it's like for teachers as your sister can. You really ought to wait and see what I find out from my daughter. Who knows?, she might agree with you. But instead you chose to discount her opinion before you even found out what it was.

Not justifying the officer's actions. I don't know who was right/ wrong.....
And, I was responding to your comment that back in the day when you went to school...
Pointing out that things are different than back in the day.

Whatever insight your daughter has to give can not be compared to my sister's opinion since my sister has not given her opinion, nor have I asked her for it. My comment had nothing to do with her opinion and was a response to your 'back in the day' post.

Apparently reading comprehension wasn't covered on that IQ test you took back in the day. 😏

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by barbara

Not justifying the officer's actions. I don't know who was right/ wrong.....
And, I was responding to your comment that back in the day when you went to school...
Pointing out that things are different than back in the day.

Whatever insight your daughter has to give can not be compared to my sister's opinion since my sister has not given her opinion, nor have I asked her for it. My comment had nothing to do with her opinion and was a response to your 'back in the day' post.

Apparently reading comprehension wasn't covered on that IQ test you took back in the day. 😏

Here's the bottom line. You used your sister as a source, I am proposing to use my daughter. Basically a wash there Barb.

The fact that you are taking issue with me on this is simply because you don't like me.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Precisely the point: YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT.

You entire diatribe doesn't apply, especially once the decision to arrest has been made.

Too bad.

Again, Tinker is a 1st Amendment case dealing with a citizen protest (students wearing black arm bands in solidarity with the people of Vietnam). Although the SCOTUS found in favor of the students, they did hold that disruptive behavior in a school is not covered by the 1st Amendment (though the wearing of the armbands is).

All Tinker says is that, within a school setting, unruly behavior is not protected by the 1st Amendment in the way it might be in the public square. It does NOT criminalize such behavior and it certainly doesn't license the sort of response that the teacher, the principle and, most of all, the Resource Officer exhibited.

Are you even acknowledging any wrongful behavior of any kind on the part of the cops? You are ridiculous.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Once you've decided to arrest, any risk of "death or serious bodily harm" to the arrestee is -- essentially -- meaningless if you can enunciate even the barest theory that not effecting arrest as rapidly as possible might lead to potentially increased danger for the arresting officer or surrounding civilians. That's an easy sell, here.

It would be.

So, tell me this. What justifies the cop's decision to arrest in the first place? What felony or misdemeanor had the girl committed? Given the decision to arrest her, what indications were there in her demeanor that a more tempered response would lead to increased danger?

[Zeke]

(Deep breath...)

In today's litigious society teachers, principals, authority figures, et al, are at immediate legal peril if you touch a student. Good, bad, irrelevant, etc., doesn't matter. So, they defer to police. The issue is that police -- again constrained by legal recourse -- possess less options than educators used to once called in.

There used to be things like:

1. Detention.
2. Expulsion.
3. Corporal Punishment.
4. Extra scholastic duty.

We can make up more but the important thing is that officers don't have them.

The point is, each of these -- in some manner -- can leave you open to some sort of exposure and, by and large, school systems have eradicated, gutted, left behind or otherwise minimized them with increased intervention from enforcement agencies that only possess a single option: compliance or arrest. I'm not saying this is good or bad but it is inherently hypocritical to tarnish the behavior of an officer who arrives with two options and he was called because the first one is off the table. And once we've moved to arrest, you're going down.

Look, I dealt with felons. I did not typically walk or drive a daily beat. My job as a POST certified brown guy, with a degree, who was trained by Massad Ayoob and spoke Spanish was to locate felons with warrants. They came back to incarceration whether they wanted to or not. Most of them could be readily talked down, it was not as bad ass as TV would have you believe. I used to be really good with a Glock 21 and Mini-14. If I ever touched them? I told myself I'd lost control of the situation. Even when we got our guy, I felt like I lost... But by virtue of them being parole absconders, felons, prior criminals, etc., the...nuance...of operating in a scholastic environment is not something I am familiar with. I am wholly familiar with powers once the decision to arrest has been made.

Once this officer made that call? Surrounded by innocent students? He could drag this chick out by her hair macing her face into oblivion and be legally protected. The only way he could NOT be protected is if the decision to arrest was wrong. By the time he'd arrived, he was the 3rd layer of non-compliance. Given such, it's pretty hard to sell this girl not only got what she deserved but was let off lightly.

If there is an issue here, it doesn't rest with force. Any troglodytic officer can sell, in a room full of kids, that damned near any measure of force to subdue and arrest immediately is codified as justifiable. If you really, truly, desperately desire to disparage an officer than you need to question the arrest.

Personally, once this worked it's way up the chain, I don't perceive that as questionable.

Also, I just had a tooth pulled. Vicodin makes me verbose.

[barbara]

Originally Posted by Tom Joad

Here's the bottom line. You used your sister as a source, I am proposing to use my daughter. Basically a wash there Barb.



The fact that you are taking issue with me on this is simply because you don't like me.

Don't like you! How could I not appreciate a fellow debater who doesn't know when to throw in the towel!

I'm taking issue for the reason of accuracy.

You stated something that was not accurate.

I corrected you.

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Interestingly enough, I can: although it's likely to irate the masses.

Once you've decided to arrest, any risk of "death or serious bodily harm" to the arrestee is -- essentially -- meaningless if you can enunciate even the barest theory that not effecting arrest as rapidly as possible might lead to potentially increased danger for the arresting officer or surrounding civilians. That's an easy sell, here.

This guy got fired because his boss is afraid of bad publicity, not because he doesn't believe he was right. In the end, the law will protect the officer but they'll find some manner in which to exchange $$$ and do it where the local department can act all community policing. There'll be zero professional mar and the officer will be made financially whole in a closed agreement. If that doesn't occur, the Department will be financially gutted by the Union. This officer did his job.

If he wanted his job back, he could get it but -- given a payday -- who cares?

So it would be fine just to shoot everyone and arrest no one, wouldn't it? That would offer the quickest result with the least danger to the officer and third parties, and those are the only criteria that matter, according to you.

Security-think, which is what I call the value-set you commonly favor us with here, is basically driven by the criminal = enemy equation, with the instinctive motivation to destroy enemies utterly trumping all other considerations. The ideology concerns itself almost exclusively with technique with the goals of the technique hardly ever questioned, and thus an institutional bias toward brutality becomes codified. The liberal individual rights philosophy embodied in our constitution, that would hold that 'subjects' in the field have rights, and that their welfare matters, is simply off the radar, not a consideration.

I mean, Ike, do you see any drawback to the 'shoot them all' strategy, other than certain hassles with the legacy legal system?