Alabama students sue authorities over alleged police brutality

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Telegraph

Alabama students sue authorities over alleged police brutality
A group of school pupils in Alabama is suing the local education authority for running a "police state" in which officers are allegedly using "chemical weapons" to enforce discipline.

By Jon Swaine, New York 8:07PM GMT 06 Dec 2010

Seven students in Birmingham, Alabama, have filed a class action lawsuit against the city's education board and the local police force over the frequent use of Mace, or pepper spray, in schools.

The spray is readily used to "enforce basic school discipline", the lawsuit claims, and "school personnel not only watch, but sometimes even celebrate when schoolchildren are maced".

The city has police officers in every school under a scheme designed to ensure the safety of pupils, the lawsuit states. But "officers have abandoned their primary mission", the pupils allege, "in order to become stools of school personnel who have abdicated their disciplinary responsibilities".

Teachers call them in to handle even "minor incidents of childish misbehaviour", including pupils swearing or not doing what they are told, claim the pupils, who are aged between 16 and 19.



Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8184824/Alabama-students-sue-authorities-over-alleged-police-brutality.html

[iamtechus]

1. No sympathy here.

16 is certainly old enough to understand one's obligation not to infringe on others' right to get an education.

[Name removed]

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[TheMadMonk]

3. Maybe, maybe not. At sixteen kids should know when to pull their heads in.

This one IS a two sided story.

I won't say the cops are not being used excessively by school admins, or that they are not excessive in their use of pepper sprays. Chances are that there are at least some such instances.

But at sixteen cooperation with necessary authority and basic civil behaviour should be an unnegotiable given. And unfortunately certain aspects of the system do prioritise the most disruptive over the rest, the quest for rehabilitation/redemption of the worst students does seriously limit the ability of other students to learn.

The power to exclude in most schools is now pretty much limited to Zero Tollerance issues, and behavioural "problems" are classified as medical, often affording them special handling in the public school system that can prove detrimental to others.


I susspect this overuse of civil authority in the school system is at least in part a reflection of the very real reduction in the authority afforded the teachers and the system iteslf. When the dregs of the student body can verbally assault with near impunity and likewise refuse to comply with the most reasonable of requests I can understand a good many teachers silently begging these students to cross the line that allows them to call down a faceful of pain. And some of the even less principled deliberatly bluring the line.

Doesn't mean I like it. But I think I can understand it.

We have become so attached to the technical definition of childhood, that we as a society are perfectly willing to take a very small chance on turning one uncooperative life around at sixteen, even when the likely price is the curtailment of the futures of several of his classmates at eighteen.