Utterly deranged. I’m amazed that they let him out of the house (and if they do that he can find his way back home by himself). The scary thing is that he’s probably eligible to serve on juries and vote.
If you believe the degree of force that was used was reasonable, you’re not only idiotic and deranged, you’re also morally defective.
Leavering/slamming the back of a person’s head down onto a hard floor is deadly force. Since you do not grasp the concept, you should stop pretending to teach martial arts to children.
Although I’ve observed that almost every interaction with Clothahump is ultimately pointless, I think the attitude expressed in this paragraph is fairly typical of the authoritarian view of public service, and deserves some discussion. So I’m going to try a response, not to Clothy individually, but to this point of view in general.
The problem with seeing the girl as the author of this specific chain of events is that it includes a presumption that only one type of response to defiance of authority is appropriate, and an expectation that therefore only one type of response is possible. Further, any questioning of that presumption and expectation is seen as an apologia for the behavior of the girl.
But forcing compliance is not the only option for authorities in response to recalcitrance; in fact, it’s only in special cases the most appropriate response. Certainly in a learning environment, immediate compliance takes a back seat to the welfare of the other students, which in this instance was in no way served by bringing the confrontation to a head during class.
The cop bears full responsibility for the excessive use of force, and has quite rightly suffered strict consequences. Good riddance to poor judgement. However, he was not the only person in authority who exhibited poor judgement here. That started with the teacher and was compounded by the administrator who doubled down on the foolishness.
Compelling the girl to follow his instructions (to relinquish the cell phone) was more important to that teacher than the supposed reason for those instructions (to remove a disruptive element from the class). In fact, in pursuing compliance, the teacher brought his own authority to bear in creating and expanding the disruption he was ostensibly trying to prevent, and placed himself deliberately into a classic standoff situation he should’ve know damn well he needed to avoid if he was to deliver the scheduled lesson to the rest of the students.
The most proper response ISTM would’ve been to defer corrective action to the end of the period. The girl was sitting at the side of the classroom and was by all reports not speaking or making noise. Deferring punishment to the end of the classroom might not have been satisfying to the teacher, but it certainly would’ve been more edifying for the other students.
That the girl was disobedient was bad behavior, deserving correction and counselling. That the teacher and administrator snowballed that adolescent disobedience into a physical confrontation involving a school resource officer was general incompetence. That the resource officer chose to use force in the manner he did was without question abusive. The girl is guilty of being a troubled teen. The teacher and administrator are guilty of poor job performance. Officer Fields is guilty of assault.
But to strict authoritarians, it’s the youngest and least mature person involved in the incident who’s most responsible for how it went down.
I watched it multiple times. At the beginning of the video the cop is already wrapped around the girl from behind. Almost immediately she appears to be struggling and flailing. I saw no punch and no clear contact with the cop’s face, but it’s possible her flailing hand touched his face (after he had already wrapped her in a hold from behind). He deliberately slams her backwards (I say “deliberately” because of how he moved his other hand lower to get leverage for the slam), with enough force that a child’s neck could have snapped, I think.
Body slam is just how it looked to me. And it’s going backwards because that’s what the cop wanted to do.
I’ll take this as a cowardly dodge, since that slam seemed forceful enough to do serious damage or kill, with bad luck and a bad angle.
Honestly can’t imagine how anyone can see a clear punch in this video, or have no questions at all about the cop’s behavior.
For some it might help to prevent future feelings of guilt for not fighting back; others might decide they need to fight back (and even be physically injured) so others will believe that they were truly attacked (since a frequent dismissal of rape or sexual assault is “I don’t see any bruises” or some variation); and others may just be incapable of allowing their bodies to be used or manipulating without resisting.
I’ve ended several fights before they began by making the other party know that, no matter what happens, I’m going to make them pay for it. And these were big guys (or multiple guys) who thought they’d already won the fight and I’d just fall over and let them have their way with me (beating wise).
“I can’t fight back, I’ll lose” means you already lost.
“I’m going to fight back, even if I lose” scares bullies.
How long would that have taken? To what further extent would the educational process have been disrupted? Would we not now be arguing about how the cops held up an entire classroom for 45 minutes because they needed a two-on-one advantage to deal with one little girl?