Cake and Rental Cops
This is incredible.
School security guards in Palmdale, CA have been caught on camera assaulting a 16-year-old girl and breaking her arm after she spilled some cake during lunch and left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning it up.
The incident occurred last week at Knight High School in Palmdale and was caught on a cell phone camera by another pupil who was then also assaulted by the security
audrey:
I don’t understand why this is legal in states where corporal punishment has been banned. It’s been against the law in California for over 20 years now. If the Rent-a-Cops in the schools aren’t having to abide by the same rules as teachers, then they are eerily similar to Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, getting around laws that don’t apply to them, thanks to a loophole. If a student is about to attack someone, physical restraint is in order - but I can’t imagine allowing a piece of dropped cake to ever escalate to that level.
Corporal punishment factoid: African-American students comprise 17% of all public school students in the U.S., but are 38% of those who have corporal punishment inflicted on them, more than twice the rate of white students. (It’s like a training ground, I suppose, for our so-called justice system.)
Aside from the racist application of violence-as-discipline against students in our schools, as well as it being ineffective in reducing violence by students and what it does to their academic performance and self-esteem, I have major concerns with schools sending the message to young women who are just beginning to date that violence against them by people they’re supposed to trust is normal - that it’s done for their own good because the person being violent cares about them.
29 September 2007, 10:29 pmdogfather:
When our president, our bully-in-chief, thinks his position gives him authority over everyone who walks the earth, you can’t expect much better from other insecure bullies with badges who manage to confuse responsibility with power.
Fear of authority is not respect for authority. Hatred is the inevitable result of this approach, in Iraq, or in school.
I truly hope the assailant reaps what he has sown: serious jail time. Same for the security guard.
If this goon does not do time, I expect riots. I might even applaud them. I would certainly understand. What else can people do? Vote?
30 September 2007, 5:30 pmElaina:
Jesus.
After reading the post on that new book critiquing the porn industry, then watching this, I have to ask myself, “wonder how much porn those asshole security guards watch in their downtime?”
30 September 2007, 10:53 pmdogfather:
Their porn of choice is doubtless “Soldier of Fortune.”
1 October 2007, 10:02 amStanislaw:
I find it interesting that as digital video cameras become cheaper, and even installed on many cell phones, we’re seeing more incidents like this. Students getting tased, beaten, brutalized by campus rent-a-cops.
I think as time goes on we’re going to see more such incidents see the light of day. Of course, it really just begs the question–if this is the stuff cops (and rent-a-cops) do in *public*, what are they up to when the doors are closed?
2 October 2007, 10:19 am