This. Is. Not. Acceptable.
As you may have heard, the police officer assaulting a South Carolina high school student in this video has been fired.
And, predictably, the wingnuts are sad. Yes, that’s right. The teen-age girl being assaulted in this video had it coming, they tell us, because the nice Officer Man had asked her nicely to leave the classroom, and she refused. So the Officer Man had no choice but to make her hurt. Because a great big man couldn’t possibly have taken a 90-pound girl into hand and escorted her from the classroom otherwise. (sarcasm off)
Some vile excrement named David French actually wrote:
This is what happens when a person resists a lawful order from a police officer to move (UPDATE: CNN is now reporting that a third video shows the student hitting the officer in the face when he initially put his hands on her). Unless the school is willing to have one student commandeer the classroom indefinitely, the officer has few options beyond physical force — and the use of physical force is rarely pretty to see. In this instance, the use of force was decisive, brief, and did not physically harm the student.
If in fact this assault did not harm the student, then the student, the policeman and the school are lucky. Because he could have snapped her neck or twisted her spine.
I don’t know if David French has children, but I suspect his tune would be very different if one of his offspring were manhandled like this, for any reason. And, for the record, I’m not accepting on face value anyone’s story of what this teenager was doing in the moments before the assault.
This is so obviously outrageous you’d have to be blind not to see the wrong here. But there are lots of blind people on this planet. Indeed, the Dumbest Man on the Internet sees a double standard because a white principal was slammed to the floor by a black student (who was subsequently arrested and charged), and to him this is just the same thing as a large, and white, and male, police officer and Public Employee and Authority Figure violently assaulting a black teenage girl. And merely getting fired.
Yep, righties are whining that this is just the Liberal Media making a big Politically Correct deal out of nothing.
But this is not acceptable. There is no excuse for what the officer, Ben Fields, did in that video. I don’t care if she was not following directions. I don’t care if she punched him with her girlie little fist or spat at him or insulted his mother. He’s supposed to be an adult in charge. He’s supposed to be trained to handle situations like this in a professional and competent manner.
Oh, and the student who shot the video is still facing charges for shooting the video.
Where’s Huckleberry and and Cruzers. Oh, right, tonight’s Colorado debate night.
If the charges against the girl aren’t promptly dropped, I’m sure there are lawyers slavering to get the case.
Wow!
What a young black woman-hating he-man!
Officer Fields, what do you do in your spare time?
Trip cripples?
Tip over people in wheelchairs?
Thow a pork chop into busy traffic, so the blind person’s dog confuses its priorities?
How did you work your way up to policing high school kids?
Work your way up from K to 8 with a rubber billy-club?
Btw – any non-minority females you you beat on, or do you just stick to them!
This evil f*cker already had prior açcustions of violence in that school, so why was he allowed to work there?
He’s now unemployed.
Good!
Hopefully he seeks and gets help, and can move on.
More importantly, I hope the young woman does too. She is likely to have problems with authority figures – I know I would. Hell, I’ve had one for a long time, and nothing like this ever happened to me!
As for the young woman who vidio’d this horrible and frightening incident, to charge her with anything is beyond idioitic!
Wtf were the people who did that, thinking?
Slowly and surely we will all be forced to respect and be obsequious when we face people in authority – even if they have to beat and Taze us into doing that.
And if people die, well, you can’t have scrambled eggs without breaking them and beating them with your hands, feet, and/or a billy-club.
Maybe Officer Fields might hit the dwarf tossing circuit as a means of support now that he’s been shit-canned from his job.
Both students still face charges. Fields doesn’t unless the FBI/Justice Dept decides to charge him.
And initially, the teacher and principal felt Fields acted appropriately. They should be fired, too.
I wonder if Charles Krauthammer has weighed in with an opinion about the video?
Totally unnecessary, totally out of control on the officer’s part, and a total failure of the school to deal with a student’s problem/situation/feelings. If the reports of her loss of family and entry into foster care are correct, this was a disastrous reaction to her uncooperative attitude. Send the rest of the class and the teacher to the library to continue the lesson and sit down and listen to her. Do something human. Disgusting.
I’ve been in the same situation a couple of times where I asked a kid to leave the class and they refused. I always got an administrator and not our resource officer. One time even after the principal came down to remove the student and the kid still refused to leave we had the rest of the class leave the classroom so we could deal with the kid without the audience. The kid quickly complied at that point. You know, just think a little bit when you’re in those situations and try and be the adult and you’ll be much better off.
The student is an orphan…she has no one to defend her…the perfect target for police…the perfect target for bigots…
Kevin, I heard that report also about teacher and VICE principle supporting the officer’s action. These poor kids are being schooled in a violent atmosphere that is so damaging. All students should be given a medal for not becoming raving maniacs. Does anyone else remember the aforementioned report. I would love to see a source and encourage more reporting on it. Have to root out the violence here.
My old business partner used to say anyone can beat up a kid, you have to out smart them. I like bucky’s comment.