Okay, so now I’ve looked at three different angles of Deputy Ben Fields arresting a female student who refused to leave the classroom when ordered to do so. Three things stand out:
1) I have no sympathy for the girl at all. None. Zero. She was disrupting the class, interrupting the education of 34 other students, and furthermore was given every opportunity to voluntarily leave the classroom. The teacher, an administrator, and then the deputy told her she needed to leave the classroom. She refused. Shit gets real at that point.
2) From the angle with the best view, Deputy Fields did not body slam a non-resisting girl to the floor as claimed. She quite clearly was resisting as he tried to remove her from the desk in order to physically remove her from the classroom. The cause of the desk falling backwards to the floor was quite clearly that she was holding on to the desk as he tried to lift her from the desk and maneuver her out of the desk. At that point he loses control of the desk-girl combo and drops it as he loses his balance, and the desk falls over backwards. He did not throw the girl down, gravity did that. Then as she sits on her back in the desk stunned, he grabs her and starts dragging her *and* the desk towards the door, at which point she becomes disentangled from the desk and he turns her over and cuffs her.
3) That said, Deputy Fields clearly made an error in judgment when he decided to remove the girl from the desk. He clearly did not plan for the eventuality of her physically resisting via holding on to the desk when he applied force and also clearly had no plan for how to maneuver her out of the desk if she resisted. Furthermore he endangered another student by letting the desk fall backwards into that other student’s desk.
My final thought: Given that Deputy Fields had a duty to remove the girl from the classroom, any techniques he used would have had terrible optics. Most pain compliance techniques, for example, would have made it look like he was torturing the student (the optics of a white cop using a tactical baton on a black girl? Man, *bad* optics) as well as some of them (such as jacking an arm behind the back) having the possibility of dislocating the shoulder. Simply grabbing her hand and pulling her *and* the desk combo would have risked dislocating her shoulder too. From Deputy Fields’ point of view I’m not sure that there was a win-win situation possible. Given that, he chose what he felt was the most expedient method to resolve the situation. The reality that it turned out to be the wrong one is easy for us to recognize in hindsight, but we weren’t there.
So despite my well known aversion to bad cops, I’m reluctant to put Deputy Fields into that category based upon this one incident. If there is a long chain of bad judgment calls in his past, yes, this is probably his last rodeo. Otherwise, I’d give him a pass, bad optics be damned — the girl needed to be removed from the room, and while he didn’t choose the best way to do so, he did accomplish the job without injury to the girl or to other students.
For expressing that opinion, I got universal condemnation on Daily Kos. Typical reaction: “I’m glad you’re no longer a teacher!” Yeah, the feeling is mutual. So, liberal anti-teacher Kossite crusaders: You’ve never had a chair or tray of food thrown at you, never been cursed out by a student, never had to deal with parents threatening to shoot you if you ever say a cross word to their child about their child’s behavior, all you know are white bread submissive middle class kids who can be motivated by grades and threats of suspension. And then you decide to make a personal attack upon someone who brings years of experience to the table because that experience doesn’t match your white middle class liberal biases? How… white… of you.
You’re right, my type isn’t needed. We need teachers more concerned about the rights of one girl, than about the rights of the other 34 students in the classroom. We need teachers who care only about the feelings of their students, not about their academic accomplishments. We need teachers who coddle children in the way their parachute parents demand, rather than demand excellence. Congratulations, you now have the ineffectual schools you demand, staffed with teachers who cater to parachute parents’ every demand and that make sure that every child is full of self esteem. Which is why over 75% of the people we’ve hired here in Silicon Valley over the past decade have been educated in other countries — the results of American schools are, frankly, self-entitled ninnies who can’t wipe their bums without their parachute mums and are utterly useless at actually producing excellence. Feel proud of yourselves, Kossites?
– Badtux the Former Teacher Penguin
Thanks for the explainer, Tux. I have seen a few headlines mentioning this hoo-hah, but I haven’t bothered to read anything about it because it looked like one of those issues about which I do not have a shit to give. I deal with plenty of outta-control people — psychos, REPRESENT, yo! — who have no more sense about how to act around others than any 2-year-old throwing a tantrum. Fortunately, we never have to physically remove anyone from a situation alone, thanks to workplace safety laws and a sense of teamwork. Too bad the cop did. If I was doing it, I would have favoured some sort of arm lock, but that would still leave the girl’s other arm free to punch him in the face with. And people wonder why cops use Tasers…
As far as the Kosbaggers, is there no common sense? Is everything seen through lib-coloured glasses there? I despise arrogant pigs with a passion, but even I will concede that they’re not ALWAYS wrong. Dingbats who think “freedom” means “yell and scream all you want, and shame on any authority who puts your ass back in line” are as stupid as Glibertarians who think liberty means “no rules.” You forgot to tag this one with “Left Wing Stupidity.”
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Yeah, I’d probably have gone for the arm lock too, but that has the possible result of dislocating the shoulder especially if you’re a 250 pound body builder trying to do it to a 120 pound girl so I suspect that’s why he didn’t go for it. Apparently he told the girl “Are you going to get up and leave the classroom with me, or am I going to have to make you?” and she said “Make me.” Uhm, yeah. Actions have consequences, and saying that to a cop probably isn’t going to have good consequences. Sadly she probably hasn’t learned her lesson here since she has successfully deflected attention upon the cop rather than upon her own behavior. I was always wary of that kind of manipulative behavior where students tried to paint authority figures as evil child abusers, some kids were very good at it especially in today’s parachute parent world. Yet another reason why I’m glad I’m no longer teaching. Computers don’t threaten to lie on you if you discipline them.
BTW, tag fixed ;).
– Badtux the Former Teacher Penguin
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If you look on ThinkProgress, they making her out as a kid just sitting at her desk minding her own business and big ole bad cop does all sort of mean things for no reason. SMH
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It’s a common problem with pet issues at certain web sites. I recently defended having cast a vote for Nader in 2000 on LG&M – I live in MD which was Gore’s to begin with and it’s winner take all in the Electoral College so my vote was intended purely as a message to the Democratic Party. I am today 57 years old, have voted and been active in politics my entire adult life and only that one time voted for other than a Democrat at the state or federal level.
Support my decision, don’t support it. Frankly I don’t give a shit either way. But good lord was I slammed in the comments. One of the nicer replies was I should have a giant “L” for loser tattooed on my forehead. I always knew the LG&M gang was virulently anti-Nader but even I was surprised by the vehemence of the replies.
Which in my book proves Rahm Emanuel right: fuck the base, they’re sheep who’ll pull the “D” lever without a second thought.
Why people can’t evaluate a given situation based on the facts within that given situation is beyond me.
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Lots of virulent “Team Blue” supporters are the same way with their vituperation of Glenn Greenwald. Because he DARES to write about the abuses of power by Preznit Hopey that were exposed by Edward Snowden. It’s BAAAAAAD if it was done by Bush (true dat) but one must not criticise the current front man for the Deep State. Principles don’t matter; only the Team does.
P.S. I voted for Nader in 2000 too, and I was living in Charlotte County, Fla. then. I regret it now, but I reckon ¡Jeb and Katherine Harris would have stolen the electoral votes anyway, absent a margin of a couple hundred thousand votes for Gore.
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“So despite my well known aversion to bad cops, I’m reluctant to put Deputy Fields into that category based upon this one incident. If there is a long chain of bad judgment calls in his past, yes, this is probably his last rodeo.” — Badtux
According to this article, Fields does have a long chain of bad judgment calls. He’s been sued twice previously for civil rights violation (one jury found him not guilty, and the other case is still pending), and he’s been repeatedly accused of abusing students over the past three years. It doesn’t look good for him.
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First of all, accusations of abusing students sans evidence at least sufficient to convince the school district are worthless. When I was teaching in HISD it was common for unruly students to claim teachers abused them, because it meant that the teacher then got reassigned to another school pending investigation and they got a new teacher (or, more likely, a long term substitute) who might not be as much of a disciplinarian. 99% of the time, an investigation involving interviewing other students in the classroom in private found that no abuse happened and that the student simply made it up. But because there was no repercussion to the student who made the false report of abuse, and plenty of reward (he got rid of the teacher who was “mean” to him), it happened all the time. In fact, a student threatened to do it to me when I disciplined him for disrupting class. I bluffed him by saying I was a member of the teacher’s union and we’d sue his momma for false reporting if he did that, did he want his momma going back to jail for committing a crime? But it was all bluff, reality is that if he’d gone ahead and done it, I would have been out of there before you could say “Goodbye”.
That said, if the second accusation of civil rights violation proves to be true, he should be gone. But that’s something that should be decided in a court of law, not by a lynch mob, and a lynch mob is what the Kossites and their ilk have gathered up.
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Whatever disruption to the class she caused by taking out a cellphone was minor compared to the disruption the Blue-Gang-Banger caused by brutally beating her. But I do grant that his action was educational; a lesson in police-state tyranny.
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Hold it — being arrested for trespassing is police state tyranny?
What, exactly, do you want to have happen when a student who has been told to leave the classroom refuses to do so? An administrator came in and told her she had a choice of coming to the office or being suspended and arrested for trespassing. She chose to be suspended and arrested for trespassing. You’re saying suspended students should be allowed to just come on campus and do whatever they want? That wouldn’t be a school. That would be chaos.
I don’t know of a school in the United States that would not call the police to arrest a kid for trespassing if the kid came back on campus when suspended. I had it happen twice when I was teaching, and both times the student (two different students, two different schools) came back loaded for bear ready to beat up the kid he thought was responsible for him being suspended, once with a knife, once unarmed. Both times the kid ended up being led off in cuffs with a few extra bruises to show for it.
Look, if the girl had been just minding her own business and suddenly a cop comes in and body slams her and arrests her, I’d be willing to talk about police state tyranny. But in this case, that wasn’t what happened. We had a girl who made a deliberate choice to defy the principal and be suspended, and who then refused to leave once she was suspended. At that point either you have the girl arrested for trespassing, or you don’t have a school, you have a fucking daycare center for juvenile delinquents and no learning is going to take place. But hey, the kids might end up stupid, but at least they’ll have self esteem, right? Right?!
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[…] I add my $0.02, I invite you to check out BadTux’s analysis of the […]
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What is needed are better techniques and procedures for dealing with students who refuse to comply. You have failed in your job when you have to use physical force.
It would have been better to simply leave her there and relocate the class.
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The *job* of a police officer is handling those situations where physical force is necessary. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t need police officers, we’d need, I don’t know, crime counsellors or burglar whisperers or something like that. A police officer is, by definition, a thug — but *our* thug, one working for us, the voting public, whose job is to take care of those *other* thugs, those who would harm us.
I do agree that the class needed to be removed from the classroom prior to the arrest. First, having the other students in the classroom meant it was possible for them to be injured during the arrest. Secondly, an arrest of a resisting subject (and she *was* resisting, she was not complying with lawful orders and hanging on to her desk as if it were her lover) by definition requires violence, and violence is upsetting to people. Third, it means the optics are no longer an issue in today’s video camera age and you can use pain compliance techniques that will result in the girl screaming in pain but are less risk to the student than trying to drag her out of the desk physically. Can you imagine the discussion we’d be having if the officer had jacked the girl’s arm behind her back in a comealong armlock and she was howling in pain on video? It’d be just as bad as the one we’re currently having, “how dare that big mean cop cause pain to that poor innocent little girl!” would be the least of it.
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The “job” of a police officer also is to defuse a situation so that violence is not needed to resolve it. Thuggery is a last resort.
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Again, if all situations could be diffused via talk, we wouldn’t need police officers. We don’t arm police officers with guns and batons and handcuffs and all that because all situations can be diffused via talk. We arm police officers with all that crap because there’s some situations that *can’t* be resolved with talk. In this particular case, the teacher and an administrator both tried talk, and had determined that the girl needed to be removed from the room and suspended. The officer told her she needed to leave the classroom and she refused and said “make me.” We’ve had *three* different people attempt to deal with the situation without violence at that point. Past that point, it’s clear that physical force is all that’s left, and that’s why we hire police officers — to handle situations where talk has failed. Otherwise we wouldn’t give them all that crap.
Look, the girl was in the process of being suspended, she was at that point trespassing in that classroom after being forbidden to be there, and either we have a nation of laws or we have rule of the jungle, and I’m not fond of rule of the jungle because it’s always the most vicious and evil who end up in charge then. I’ve been in schools where rule of the jungle was the rule. There is no learning taking place. Sorry, but after the 3rd person tried to get her to leave peacefully, I have no — zero — sympathy for the girl about what happened next. All I have is concern that the police officer did it in a way that had potential to injure other students, due to doing it in the middle of a crowded classroom.
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I took 24 hours to think on this – also to look on kos for the article but could not find it. Anyways BADTUX your 100% right on this one (then again I usually agree with your thoughts) Having been a bit of a bully in school I know exactly how I would have diffused this without the optics and without the threat or even disruption to students. 1) Fault – The girl is 100% at fault as she let the situation escalate to a 3rd level of support – that means your done in my book with a third strike 2) The teacher is probably a bit of a jerk in 1st place but that makes no difference here as Admin(2nd level) agreed to pull her from class. 3) Diffusion – As the officer he is 3rd level charged with task of ending situation – you walk in say which one. No more talk – you grab back of the chair and drag it into the hallway and shut the door. Now in the hallway the class may proceed with no risk to anyone who is trying to learn something. The student now looking and feeling a little stupid probably leaves on her own. If not you offer to drag her chair with her in it off school property and charge her with theft of a desk. 🙂
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Sounds pretty good. I’m not sure how easy it would have been — were there other desks between the girl and the door that would have prevented him from dragging her desk out? Thing is, we’re all second guessing the situation after the fact, and the officer was basically pointed at a girl, told “remove her from class,” and didn’t have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight and 24 hours to think about it. I think he made the wrong judgement call in that the choice he took was one that could have resulted in injury to another student (at this point I have no sympathy for the girl, arrests of resisting suspects aren’t pretty — and she *was* resisting, it’s clear from the front angle that she was), but thing is, I (and you) have the benefit of hindsight and time. I’m not going to condemn the officer for one bad judgement call, and I’m *certainly* not going to hand wring over “oh he was so mean to that poor widdle girl” nonsense. The girl was in the process of being suspended, she was at that point trespassing in that classroom after being forbidden to be there, and either we have a nation of laws or we have rule of the jungle, and I’m not fond of rule of the jungle because it’s always the most vicious and evil who end up in charge then.
– Badtux the Traditional Conservative Penguin
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Looks like the lefties are going to get their pound of flesh. ThinkProgress is reporting that he is going to be fired.
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I noted that if there was a pattern of bad judgement on his part he should be fired. The question is whether that is true. That will be determined by his record at a civil service hearing. If there is no pattern of bad judgement, he will have his job back shortly, though he will not be welcome back at the schools as a resource officer. If there is, he will be fired — and should be fired.
Either way, a lynch mob is *not* the way to handle this kind of situation.
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I fully agree with you but what it seems to me is that he was fired due to the lynch mob. It would be interesting to see what the results of the hearing
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http://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/26/welfare-schools-and-psychoanalyzing-education-reformers/
Piece about Teach for America. Basic premise is that we are culturally conditioned to think education is the only solution necessary to solve poverty. One they begin teaching, idealistic young teachers learn how material adversity precludes learning.
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