Thinking back to my days in junior high and high school, I can remember one time when police officers visited other than the occasional anti-drug rally.
Word spread quickly the officers were at the school with a dog, walking him up and down in front of the hallway lockers we all used for books. Apparently, there were concerns some were using lockers for other products not necessarily conducive to high school education.
But in the day-to-day life of the student body, law enforcement officers were not a constant or frequent presence.
Today, what have become known as school resource officers frequently can be found making the rounds through public schools. With school attacks around the country, the presence of officers provides a level of security that is welcome. But they're not just police officers. Their titles provide a clue that they're viewed as something more, and school officials have often spoken of how officers engage students, get to know many of them and come to have a "feel" for the student population.
A recent incident in South Carolina demonstrated one key fact: First and foremost, they are law enforcement officers.
The video of that incident -- of course, there's video -- showed a school resource officer flip a 16-year-old girl out of her desk and drag her across the classroom floor as other students sat still. Some had their phones out, documenting the incident. It was an appalling moment. The deputy was fired two days later by Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.
Surprisingly, though, Sheriff Lott didn't place all the blame on his deputy. He fired the deputy because he violated specific departmental policy on the kind of force applied, but the sheriff also had this to say to school district personnel: ""They need to understand that when they call us, we're going to take a law enforcement action," he said.
The girl caused the entire incident by refusing to hand over a cell phone after her teacher saw her texting, a violation of school policy. The student rebuffed her teacher's requests to stop disrupting the class. A school administrator called into the classroom also demanded the student leave the classroom. She would not.
Meanwhile, an entire class of students was not learning about math, the reason they were all there.
So the deputy was fired. What about the teacher in the classroom? A substitute teacher replaced him, at least temporarily. What happened to the disruptive student? School officials announced no disciplinary action would be taken against any students involved.
That, friends, is the topsy-turvy world we live in. The deputy's punishment can certainly be viewed as fair given the violation of department policy, but letting the student off the hook is inexcusable. Were the teacher and administrator wrong to expect the student to follow the rules of the classroom? Are school leaders supposed to let a student dictate what's happening in the classroom?
Topsy-turvy world, part II? The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Carolina have opened a civil rights violation into the circumstances surrounding the high school incident. So now, thousands of dollars will be spent devoting Department of Justice investigators to examining an incident of an immature teen's reaction to a teacher's legitimate request. That's what drove the entire incident. How does that become a civil rights issue? When the school district wants to cover its backside.
So what good can come out of all this? The school districts around the country need to heed Sheriff Lott's comment that when a law enforcement officer is called, they're likely to get a law enforcement-oriented response. So school districts need to empower teachers to deal with disruptive students. Administrators need to have backbone in standing up to students whose behaviors conflict with the educational mission of the schools. And parents have got to respond by ensuring such student behaviors have repercussions. The school district in South Carolina seems like it's ready to apologize to the student for interrupting her text messaging with class instruction.
If this officer had laid hands on one of my sons like that, you bet I'd have a problem with it. I'd be appalled by it. But I'd be just as appalled if one of my kids treated his teacher or principal so disrespectfully.
And it's pretty likely texting in class wouldn't be an issue anymore, because he wouldn't see that cell phone for a long, long time.
Commentary on 11/09/2015