Use incident of deputy’s brutality to make progress on public safety
The shockingly brutal arrest of a South Carolina high school student is the latest toxic collision of law enforcement misconduct and racial issues in America.
People on all sides must learn from this incident and try to make progress on crucial public safety matters.
One video recording of Monday’s event shows a white, male sheriff’s deputy flipping a black, female student out of her desk, flinging her across the room and then trying to handcuff her.
Excessive force clearly was used against a student who was not physically assaulting classmates or at least initially resisting the deputy, who was serving as a school security officer.
The incident reportedly began when the student refused a teacher’s command to leave the classroom after she was accused of using a cell phone. The teacher summoned the security officer.
Curtis Lavarello, head of the School Safety Advocacy Council and also a school resource officer, aptly pointed out, “We saw a pretty routine discipline issue become a criminal issue in just a matter of minutes. It escalated needlessly.”
As Americans have seen in recent months, many shootings and other incidents involving often-white law enforcement officers and usually black victims are being scrutinized more closely than ever before. That is a necessary first step in confronting police brutality, but there’s a lot more to do.
Kansas City Police Chief Darryl Forté is a leading proponent of trying to break down mistrust between his officers and residents, especially in poorer parts of the city and in areas with more minority residents.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama spoke directly to this issue, telling the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago, “I reject any narrative that seeks to divide police and the communities they serve.”
To his credit, Forté has not fallen into the trap of contending — as FBI Director James Comey did recently — that police are retreating from enforcing the law because of increased attention to their behavior.
Talking at the police chiefs conference, Comey referred to the “Ferguson effect,” the aftermath of a fatal police shooting in a St. Louis suburb. Comey said he had a “strong sense” that public cellphone recordings were “changing police behavior” around the country. The White House quickly and properly said many law enforcement leaders across the country disagreed with that contention.
Obama on Tuesday also called for adequately financing, supplying and training police departments, along with overcoming NRA lobbying to pass “common-sense” gun control in Congress. In a positive move, the police chiefs this week already have embraced that stance, supporting universal background checks for firearms purchases. The chiefs said this strategy, supported by a majority of Americans, would help keep guns out of the hands of criminals, something Obama reiterated.
In South Carolina, the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office are investigating Monday’s incident, looking to see whether laws were violated. Correctly, the deputy has been suspended and banned from the school.
In this case, video helped bring a deeply disturbing incident to the nation’s attention. There’s no place in fair, effective law enforcement for manhandling a student who posed no threat to anyone.
This story was originally published October 27, 2015 at 5:02 PM with the headline "Use incident of deputy’s brutality to make progress on public safety."