More Armed Pigs in Schools … A Solution to What?!
January 28, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In the wake of the terrible Newtown, Connecticut school shootings, and under the pretense of “protecting students,” the National Rifle Association called for armed police officers at every school in the nation. Mainstream liberal politicians attacked the NRA for opposing “gun control” legislation. But nobody in authority is talking about what it would mean to put more armed police in every school in the country.
A 2007 New York Civil Liberties Union report counted nearly 5,000 police stationed in New York City public schools (“Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools”). The report was a rare glimpse into how police impose a reign of terror already in inner-city schools. It quotes students saying the police are “treating us like criminals, like we’re animals,” and that “sometimes the classroom feels like a jail cell.” It details numerous instances where the cops brutalized students. At one school, cops chased students who tried to avoid the checkpoints, screaming, “Round them up!” Young women were searched by male officers and, the report says, “students and teachers alike complain that male police subject girls to inappropriate behavior.” A gay student was humiliated every day as male cops would flip coins to see who had to search him. And the NYCLU report exposed how teachers who defend their students are attacked and brutalized as well.
On March 8, 2005, at least seven NYPD officers arrived at the New School for Arts and Sciences after teachers called 911 to ask for medical assistance for a student who had been involved in a fight. Teachers had successfully stopped the fight and controlled the situation before the police responded, and an English teacher pointed out that those students were now peacefully sitting in the classroom. A cop responded: “You fucking teachers need to get your shit together. These kids are running crazy. You need to get rid of them.” When a teacher objected to that, he was told to “shut the fuck up” or he would be arrested. When a woman teacher objected, a police sergeant said: “That is it; cuff the bitch,” and the woman teacher was paraded out of school in handcuffs. She and another teacher were detained at the 41st precinct for approximately two hours before being released.
The NYCLU report goes on and on with such incidents, detailing numerous times where students were attacked by police and/or arrested for petty offenses like swearing, being late for school or refusing to turn over their cell phones. One 13-year-old girl was handcuffed and taken into custody in May for drawing on her desk in school.
Speaking of police brutality in schools, commentator Bob Herbert wrote, “This poisonous police behavior is an extension into the schools of the humiliating treatment cops have long been doling out to youngsters—especially those who are black or Latino—on the city’s streets.” (“Poisonous Police Behavior,” NY Times, June 2, 2007)
Anyone who really cares about the safety and well-being of our youth should be struggling to get police, armed or otherwise, to stop brutalizing and killing in or out of schools.
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