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When School Cops Go Bad: South Carolina Incident Highlights Growing Police Presence in Classrooms
We turn now to shocking new videos that have surfaced from inside a South Carolina high school where a police officer has been caught on camera slamming a teenage girl to the ground and dragging the student out of the classroom. The videos, which went viral on Monday, appear to show Deputy Sheriff Ben Fields approaching the student, who is seated at her desk, then wrapping his arm around her neck and flipping her and her desk to the ground. He then appears to drag her out of the classroom. The student was arrested. Another student who filmed the assault was also arrested and held on a $1,000 bail. The incident reportedly began when the student refused to give her teacher her phone. The incident is the latest in a series of cases of police officers in schools using excessive force against students.
Update: South Carolina authorities have announced the officer, Ben Fields, has been fired from his position.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to shocking new videos that have surfaced from inside Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, where a police officer has been caught on camera slamming a teenage girl to the ground and dragging the student out of the classroom. The videos, which went viral on Monday, appear to show Deputy Sheriff Ben Fields approaching the student, who is seated at her desk, then wrapping his arm around her and flipping her and her desk to the ground. He then appears to drag her out of the classroom. The student was arrested. Another student who filmed the assault was also arrested and held on a $1,000 bail. On Tuesday, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said he was "shocked and disturbed" by the video.
SHERIFF LEON LOTT: Just like anybody who saw the video, I was shocked and disturbed by it. You can’t watch the video without having those type of feelings. And as a sheriff and also as a parent—I have a seventh-grade daughter—it bothered me. And at that point, I wanted to have a lot of questions answered.
AMY GOODMAN: The incident reportedly began when the student refused to give her teacher her phone, which then prompted the teacher to call for outside help. Soon, Deputy Sheriff Fields came into the classroom to remove her. Classmates say Fields had a reputation as being aggressive with students, who had nicknamed him "Officer Slam." Fields has faced accusations of excessive use of force and racial bias in the past. In 2007, he was sued for excessive use of force. The case was later dropped. In 2013, he was sued in a civil rights case that is still pending. Following the release of the videos, Deputy Sheriff Fields was suspended without pay. The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have opened investigations.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The incident is the latest in a series of cases of police officers in schools using excessive force against students. In a recent exposé, Mother Jones documented many cases involving officers punching, tasing and even fatally shooting students. On Monday, Spring Valley High School student Niya Kenny, who was arrested after she filmed the assault, told local station WLTX that she was shocked and disturbed by police officer Fields’ behavior.
NIYA KENNY: I was in disbelief. I know this girl don’t got nobody, and I couldn’t believe this was happening. I had never seen nothing like that in my life, like a man use that much force on a little girl—a big man, like 300 pounds of full muscle. I was like, "No way, no way." Like, you can’t do that to no little girl. I’m talking about, she’s like 5’6". And I was screaming, "What the F? What the F? Is this really happening?" I was praying out loud for the girl. And I just—I couldn’t believe it was happening. I was just crying, and he was like, "Well, since you got so much to say, you’re coming, too." And I was like, "What?" And he—"What? You want some of this?" M-mm, just put my hands behind my back.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by three guests. In San Francisco, Jaeah Lee is with us, a reporter for Mother Jones magazine. Earlier this year, she wrote an article called "Chokeholds, Brain Injuries, Beatings: When School Cops Go Bad." In Bowling Green, Ohio, we’re joined by Professor Phil Stinson, criminologist and associate professor at Bowling Green State University. And in Austin, Texas, we’re joined by Adam Loewy, an attorney who represented Noe Niño de Rivera, a 17-year-old Texas student who spent 52 days in a medically induced coma after police used a Taser on him at school.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Jaeah, let’s begin with you and this sadly prophetic piece that you did in Mother Jones. Talk about the scope of the problem that you investigated across the country.
JAEAH LEE: Well, I should begin by saying that there is—much like with police shootings nationwide and on the streets, there isn’t good data on the use of force by cops in schools, so it’s really hard to say. I began—the story for me began with a couple of local news reports that I had seen while in the course of reporting a use of force by police officers, and I was surprised by the number of cases I was finding. One led to another. I’ve documented a handful of them in the article. And it’s hard to say just exactly how expansive this issue is. Many will point out that like with most officers on the streets, most cops in schools have a really good influence on students. Of course, because of the lacking data, it’s hard to say exactly to what degree that is true and to what degree we’re seeing problems occur.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Jaeah, I wanted to ask you, one of the things that I’ve noticed, at least in some of the debates that have occurred here in New York City on the school safety officers, is that often the chain of command of these officers does not go to the principal and the administrators of the school in particular, but actually go outside of the school to their own law enforcement agencies, and that creates problems with even the administrators or the principals being able to control the activities of these officers. Did you find that across the country?
JAEAH LEE: Yeah, there’s certainly a lack of consistency as to, first of all, what exactly the role of a school resource officer should be, let alone who they should report to and what the exact protocol is. Often those terms are defined in memorandums of understanding between the school district and the local police department, or just within the school district if they have their own internal police departments. What I have often seen, from talking to advocates and looking at several case examples, is that the officers often seem to be reporting back to their department rather than to the school district. I do—I do often hear that school districts are in close cooperation with officers, but again, the chain of command sometimes isn’t always clear, and as well as the role that they should be playing inside of the school hallways and classrooms is not always clear, either.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to former Army medic Carlos Martin. This is quite amazing. He spoke to NBC about his own interaction with this officer, Ben Fields, back in 2005. This is 10 years ago.
CARLOS MARTIN: I live maybe like four or five miles away from base. I get out my car. I walk to my door. Everything’s normal. As I’m putting the keys in the door, I hear a car peel off. Naturally, my reaction was going to be I was going to turn around to see what was going on in the situation. As I turn around, Officer Ben Fields gets out of the car—I didn’t know his name at the time. He gets out of the car, and the officer is running towards me: "Hey, you! Hey, you! Come here! Come here!" I’m like, "Who? Me?" He was like, "Yeah, you. I’m out here for a noise violation." And I was like, "OK. Well, it couldn’t have been me. I just got home." ...
He asked me for my license and registration. I handed him my license and registration. The problem was, was when I was in Germany, I lost my picture ID. I was an Alaska resident, so Alaska sends you a paper license when you don’t have your picture license. So I gave him my paper license, my German license and my registration. I even pointed out to the fact that on my tags, I still had German tags on my car, because I was just moving to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where I was stationed. He got a little upset. I guess he didn’t understand the paperwork that I gave him. He was like, "Well, what the hell is this?" I was like, "Dude, if you just calm down, you could see that I have German tags on my car." And he interrupted me in the middle of the conversation, and he was like, "You will not address me as 'dude.' I’m a Richland County officer of the law." I was like, "Well, you addressed me by 'Hey, you.'" He was like, "Well, that’s because I don’t know your name." And I was like, "Well, sir, I don’t know your name, either." And the next thing you know, wham!, he slams me to the ground and starts beating on me, hitting on me, punching me. ...
He takes out his can of mace. He uses the whole can of mace on me. And he became more violent because I didn’t react like the normal civilian. Well, I’m not a normal civilian. In this whole situation, I was in my military uniform. ...
I don’t even blame him. I blame the people who allowed him to do it, because it’s not the first time he did it. He has continuously did it. So it’s just not Officer Fields being wrong, it’s Sheriff Lott, it’s his whole department, who allowed their wild dog to be off the leash, because they knew he was a wild dog from the beginning.
AMY GOODMAN: That is the Army medic Carlos Martin, who was describing his interaction with the same officer in the video at the Spring Valley school, but this was 10 years ago. Phil Stinson, as we said, is also with us, Bowling Green State University criminologist. Can you talk about what you found with police officers in the schools? Carlos Martin, I have to say, speculated maybe Fields was taken off the street because he was so dangerous. And then what? Put into a school?
PHIL STINSON: Well, it’s an interesting thing. Police officers don’t even have to have a college education in many places across the country. They go to a police academy, which could be a few months, two months to six months, depending on the jurisdiction. And then they have periodic in-service training throughout their career. There’s very little that’s known about exactly how school resource officers are selected in many jurisdictions. But frankly, it’s officers who apply for the position, somebody who wants to work in the schools. And from what I’m hearing as to Officer Fields, I’m not sure that he has the demeanor and the personality type that would be somebody we’d want working in a public high school.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Phil Stinson, I want to ask you about this whole issue of responsibilities of school districts as opposed to where police officers are out on the street, that it’s the expectation of parents that when they send their children to school, the districts will take some responsibility for their safety, and this whole issue of more and more police being employed inside the schools and being able to use this kind of authority and force on, basically, children.
PHIL STINSON: Well, it’s estimated that more than half the schools in the United States, the public schools, have school resource officers assigned to them, either part-time or full-time. And it’s at least 17,000 officers that are in the schools.
In terms of their roles, there’s a good bit of role ambiguity here. Are they educators? Are they counselors? Are they mentors? Are they police officers? Are they security officers? In most jurisdictions, they’re all of the above. And they don’t have training in pedagogical issues. They don’t training in education issues. They’re not trained educators. And one thing that seems to be apparent here is that at least Officer Fields did not have training in de-escalation, did not have training in use of passive restraints.
You know, in the juvenile justice system, it would be unheard of for somebody to put their hands on—a staff member—put their hands on a juvenile who’s passively resisting, sitting in a chair. It’s just completely inappropriate. If you have to remove the other kids from the classroom, I guess that’s going to have to be done, but you de-escalate the situation. And if you do have to place hands on the kid, you’re going to use some sort of passive restraint procedure. You would think that they would practice this, that they would have drills in this type of thing, because I would hazard to guess that students refuse to give up cellphones in classrooms across this country, you know, every day.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break; when we come back, hear the horrifying story of another student who was attacked by police in his school. We’ll be going to Austin, Texas. And we’ll be joined by a New York high school student and organizer who are organizing to challenge police being in their high school. Stay with us.
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Texas Student Spent 52 Days in Coma After Being Tased by Police at School
Criminalizing the Classroom: Inside the School-to-Prison Pipeline ... Read More →
Criminalizing the Classroom: Inside the School-to-Prison Pipeline
New York City has more than 5,000 police officers patrolling the city’s schools—that’s more than the combined number of school guidance counselors and social workers. Nationwide, more than 17,000 officers work in the school. What happens when students are arrested in the classroom? We look at what many experts call the "school-to-prison pipeline."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to bring in two more guests. Miaija Jawara is a high school senior in Harlem. She’s a member of the Urban Youth Collaborative as well as the Dignity in Schools Campaign-New York Chapter. Earlier this month, she participated in the White House Initiative for African-American Excellence in Education. And Kesi Foster is a coordinator of the Urban Youth Collective.
Miaija, talk about your experiences with school safety officers, as they’re called here in New York City.
MIAIJA JAWARA: So, in my school, we have—since freshman year and—since my freshman year until my senior year, there’s been an increase in the number of school safety agents in my school so far. And with the increase of school safety agents, we don’t have metal detectors in our school, but we have roaming metal detectors. So, since the increase of school safety officers, the amount of times where we have the pop-up metal detectors come in our school, that’s increased, as well. The way that the school—the way that the children were disciplined, it seemed much more harsher since the increase. My experience alone, I’ve dealt with a lot of—like things that are really normal, like maybe I’m a few minutes late to class, ends with me, instead of being sent to class, being sent to the safe room, which is basically a detention room. And we—I’ve been held there like for an entire class period for being like maybe just a couple minutes late to class. So, that’s been my experience.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in the detention room, you have a safety—
MIAIJA JAWARA: Yeah, well, the safe room, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The safe room, you have safety officers, as well?
MIAIJA JAWARA: Yeah, there’s two on—outside the entrance to the room.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you could talk about your own experience—you got in a fight outside school?
MIAIJA JAWARA: Mm-hmm. So, it was in February of this year, just, you know, petty high school drama. Every high school has it. We were on school property, and we had fought after school. And we were right—we were still on school property, so, essentially, the school safety agents were the ones that were supposed to deal with the fight. But since it was kind of outside, even though we were still on school property, NYPD ended up dealing with the case. So, in addition to getting—well, being threatened with a suspension, after the fight was over, the two of us were pulled apart, put on opposite sides of the cop car, threatened with an arrest and given a criminal summons, and I had to appear in court in April of this year.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened?
MIAIJA JAWARA: When I went there, they said the case was dismissed. But when I went to school, I still had to deal with—they threatened me with a suspension, but I offered, "How about peer mediation instead?" So...
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Kesi Foster, in her case, apparently, the police, other than giving her a summons, didn’t appear to do—exercise any violence. What’s wrong with that situation?
KESI FOSTER: For receiving a summons?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes.
KESI FOSTER: So, here we have an incident which happens in high schools all across the country. Right? There was a very small, minor altercation between two students. And instead of it being dealt with by school authorities, Miaija is now being introduced into the criminal justice system for the first time in her life, right? Students that go to court during school days, because if you get a criminal summons during—you have to go to court during a school day, are four times more likely to drop out of high school than students that do not. In New York, right, because you are—at 16 years old, you are charged as an adult for anything, if you are charged with a criminal summons in a school and you don’t appear in court, or if there’s a fine that’s attached to that and you don’t appear, we now have high school students that are having open bench warrants for things that are happening within our schools, that traditionally we have handled within the schools. But over a period of time, we have now criminalized the behavior of black children, that is treated differently in other districts.
AMY GOODMAN: In New York, who’s in charge of these, what are called security officers, or SROs, in other places?
KESI FOSTER: So, in New York, they are referred to as school safety agents. They are part of the NYPD. They are not under the purview of the Department of Education. They are under the purview of the New York Police Department.
AMY GOODMAN: How much money is spent on them? Who do they answer to?
KESI FOSTER: So the money for police in schools is actually spent by the Department of Education. It’s somewhere between $360 million and $400 million a year, annually, for what they are calling school safety needs.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’ve spoken to principals in New York City schools who complain about the fact that they have no control over these safety agents. If there’s a particular one that they don’t like their methods, they have no control over whether they stay in their school or not. And as you say, they basically are the arm of the police department inside the public schools.
KESI FOSTER: There was an incident last year at a high school in Brooklyn in which a young man was walking through a school—a metal detector he had in his school. He had broken glasses, and so he had a safety pin that was holding his glasses together. And he was told, "You can’t come in with that, because it’s a weapon, or you can use it as a weapon." And he said, "I’ve been coming to school with my broken glasses for weeks, and no one’s ever bothered me." And so the safety agents told him, "If you come in, right, we’re going to confiscate your glasses. So leave them out here." And he said, "I can’t go to school all day without my glasses." And so, that turned into an altercation in which he was tackled in front of all of his classmates for trying to go into school with a pair of broken glasses.
After being tackled and given a summons, he thought the incident was over, but someone from the school actually ended up calling in the local police. And so now the local police department came and said there’s an incident at the school, and they held that child in a room with no adult supervision or anyone involved for a number of—I don’t member how long it was, about an hour or so. And the principal at that school at that time, right, something that she could have handled very easily, knowing the student and knowing this is not a dangerous situation, couldn’t control what happened throughout that whole incident.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to another story. Earlier this year in Kentucky, a deputy sheriff handcuffed two elementary school children with disabilities. This is according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The eight- and nine-year-old kids were so small that the deputy sheriff, who was working as the school’s resource officer, cuffed their biceps, because the handcuffs didn’t fit their wrists. One of the children is black, the other is Latino. Jaeah Lee, in your research, can you talk about how this fits into what’s happening across the country and the response?
JAEAH LEE: Sure. That question goes back to the history of the rise of school resource officers on K-through-12 campuses. The first sort of documented instances in which we saw cops enter school grounds was somewhere in the 1950s. The exact time is unclear. But it wasn’t until the early 2000s that we really started to see a huge spike, and that was, of course, after the tragic mass shooting at Columbine High School. The Department of Justice, since then, has spent close to a billion dollars in grants to hire school cops. It sounds like there have also been grants coming from the Department of Education. And many more school districts have spent their own budget funding to hire school resource officers. In the wake of Sandy Hook, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers, we’ve seen another spike. And, of course, what we’re seeing now, from what I hear from talking to various sources, is that there’s a larger growth happening on elementary school campuses. And so, I think in the years ahead we’ll see more incidents happen with younger children, like we did in Kentucky.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Phil Stinson, in about a minute, could you tell us to what degree the—to what degree the police are being deployed in minority school districts, largely, as opposed to white school districts across the country?
PHIL STINSON: Well, I think they’re deployed similarly across the country. There’s very little in the way of data that would be able to break that down, that I’m aware of, so it’s kind of difficult to tell. But they’re used in different ways in the schools in which they are placed. And I think it is apparent that there’s—you know, some race issues are involved here. And that’s something that needs to be looked at. My biggest concern here is, you know, the school-to-prison pipeline, where we’ve got academic failure, we’ve got exclusionary disciplinary practices, and we’ve got kids dropping out of high school. And the other thing that I’ve seen in my research is that girls that are brought into the juvenile justice system have a history of trauma. And we look at the video from South Carolina—certainly, that was a traumatic experience that girl encountered.
AMY GOODMAN: I think it’s very interesting that yesterday in all the news coverage that I saw, they kept repeating that the girl was not hurt. Now, who did they get this from? I didn’t see them speaking to the girl, so who did they get this from? Miaija, when you saw this video, did it shock you? Have you seen anything like this in your own school in Harlem?
MIAIJA JAWARA: It definitely did shock me, because just the way that the situation—how fast it escalated. It went from her sitting in her desk, the desk being flipped over, to her being dragged across the room. It definitely did shock me. And while I haven’t seen in my own—I haven’t seen it myself, I haven’t seen something as serious as that, I have seen students being pulled—being aggressively pulled out of the classroom because they don’t want to leave the classroom. Wow. It’s just that this is similar, just like I feel like I’m watching the McKinney pool party all over again. It’s a girl who is obviously much smaller than the person who is attacking her.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait just one sec. You talk about the McKinney pool party. We have video of that. And for radio listeners, they can go to our website. But let’s go back to that, because me, too, when I saw this, I thought this is exactly the same approach. Talk about what happened with this white officer and this—I think she was 14 years old—
MIAIJA JAWARA: Yeah, she was 14 years old.
AMY GOODMAN: —girl in her bikini.
MIAIJA JAWARA: Mm-hmm. So, it was a neighborhood pool party. Someone had invited people from—I’m assuming from school or from just in their community, invited them to the pool party. They were all invited guests, everyone that was there. And other people who lived in that neighborhood, they were complaining, saying, "Oh, we don’t want these black people in our neighborhood. Go back to your Section 8 housing." And the police were called. And in the video, as you can see, as soon as the police were called, everything was completely out of control. The 14-year-old girl, she’s viciously slammed to the floor. Her head is put—her face is in the grass. And she’s being—the officer is kneeling into her back. In the video, you can hear her saying, "Get off me." She’s obviously in distress. And when I see the video from South Carolina, I think of the same thing that happened in McKinney. This is another girl, another girl who’s about—much smaller than who’s attacking her. And it’s, at this point, is why do we—why is this happening again? Why is it repeating?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Kesi Foster, what do you think needs to be done? What is your organization advocating for in terms of the use of these safety agents in schools?
KESI FOSTER: Sure. So, I would say the young people, the high school students, the organizers from our organization, black and Latino organizers in New York City, as well as black and Latino organizers, high school students, throughout the country, and even parents, through the Dignity in Schools Campaign, are organizing to—one, we are organizing to eliminate suspension policies that are deeply rooted in anti-racism and—anti-blackness and racism. Right? And so, it is only—right? The biggest indicator for a student being suspended for these minor infractions is that they are black. When you control for every other factor, socioeconomic and every other factor that they say leads to so-called misbehavior, the research clearly shows that the biggest indicator for a student being more likely to be suspended is that they are black.
And so we are advocating for an elimination of suspension and policies that push students out of school. Right? And we are also advocating for replacing school resource officers and police officers in schools with more guidance counselors, social workers, community intervention workers, and professionals that are trained in trauma-informed practices to create a safe and supportive system for schools and for young people. New York City has 5,400 school safety agents and a combined 3,600 guidance counselors and social workers. And so, we are not investing in the future of black children. We’re not investing in public education. We’re investing in prison cultivation.
AMY GOODMAN: So you want the ratio flipped?
KESI FOSTER: We want the ratio flipped on its head, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, but we’ll continue with this issue. Miaija Jawara, I want to thank you for being with us, and Kesi Foster, both with the Urban Youth Collaborative. Miaija Jawara is a student, a senior at a Harlem high school here in New York. Phil Stinson, speaking to us, a criminologist from Bowling Green University in Ohio, Bowling Green State University. Jaeah Lee, a Mother Jones reporter, we’ll link to your piece at Mother Jones. And Adam Loewy, speaking to us from Austin, the attorney who represented Noe Niño de Rivera. We thank you all for being with us.
When we come back, we’re going to talk about a change of heart, an evangelical minister, when it comes to gun rights and gun violence, and the woman who changed him, the story of her 17-year-old son, a story you’ve come to know well here on Democracy Now! Stay with us.
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Cops in the Classroom: South Carolina Incident Highlights Growing Police Presence in Schools
Texas Student Spent 52 Days in Coma After Being Tased by Police at School ... Read More →
Texas Student Spent 52 Days in Coma After Being Tased by Police at School
In one of the most shocking cases of police brutality inside a school, 17-year-old Noe Niño de Rivera spent 52 days in a medically induced coma after police tased him at school in November 2013. He was permanently brain injured. Last year Bastrop County in Texas settled a federal lawsuit for $775,000 with his family. We speak to his attorney, Adam Loewy.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined by a number of guests, but we want to go directly to Austin, to Adam Loewy, who’s an attorney who represented Noe Niño de Rivera, a 17-year-old Texas student who spent 52 days in a medically induced coma after police used a Taser on him at school in Bastrop, Texas, in November of 2013.
Adam Loewy, describe what happened.
ADAM LOEWY: This was a horrific incident of excessive force. Noe was a young man, about 17 years old, in a county south of Austin, and he was in a hallway in Bastrop High School, and there was a fight that broke out between his girlfriend and another girl, two females. Noe was the peacemaker. He was breaking up the fight. This was shown clearly on the video. But two school resource officers came up to him, pushed him out of the way, and one school resource officer pulled his Taser and tased him in the middle of the hallway. Noe fell back, slammed his head and then had to be put in a medically induced coma for 52 days. It was a horrific display of violence. It was much worse than we’re seeing on the video here in South Carolina.
But there’s a lot of similarities. The officer in question here in Austin—or in Bastrop, had had a history of violence against students. He was not properly trained. And the school did not have any sort of regulations on how to deal with school resource officers. So the themes are very consistent. And I would submit it’s a growing crisis in this country, in American schools, of violence toward students.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Adam Loewy, what happened to the officers involved in this case and to your client?
ADAM LOEWY: My client was able to survive. He went to a rehabilitation center. He’s doing much better now, but he is obviously not the same person. You cannot sustain that sort of injury and just be the same. But thankfully, he is alive and functioning. The officer was cleared, completely cleared of criminal charges. The county entered into a settlement for $775,000 for the incident, so we got the case settled.
And I will just add this: Until these officers are held criminally accountable for what they are doing, this will never change. If you look at all these incidents in this country, whether it’s in New York with Eric Garner, whether it’s in Ferguson, whether it’s the Larry Jackson case here in Austin, these officers are always able to escape criminal accountability. They always get off. And I would submit that’s one of the major problems here, is that officers simply believe they will not get in criminal trouble for what they do—which is the truth. It’s extremely rare. And until that changes, we will continue to see videos that are horrific like this.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to this, Adam Loewy. Attorneys representing the county initially said that Noe Niño de Rivera had failed to comply with orders and that Officer Randy McMillan, quote, "used the reasonable amount of necessary force to maintain and control discipline at the school." The executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association, Kevin Lawrence, also defended the officer’s actions. Speaking to KXAN last year, Lawrence suggested that the student, Noe, must have been culpable, because he apologized afterwards and then seemed aggressive in the hospital.
KEVIN LAWRENCE: He was apologizing to the officers for his behavior. He was saying, you know, "I shouldn’t have done that. I’m very sorry." When they got to the hospital, he again got out of control and started being very aggressive with the hospital personnel, to the point that they called the sheriff’s office again and said, "We need help over here."
AMY GOODMAN: Adam Loewy, your response?
ADAM LOEWY: Yes, that’s all demonstrably false. He had sustained a traumatic brain injury. He was in enormous pain. What he was saying afterwards, apologizing, is what anyone would do if they had been brutally attacked and had a brain injury. He was a 17-year-old kid who had just been attacked by a police officer.
And I will say, on a larger issue, when you look at how police and communities respond, or counties respond, it is always the same. They always say the police officer was justified. They always say that the victim, the student, was in the wrong. That is very typical. And while it’s a bit different in the South Carolina case, in which this police chief is saying he was shocked by the video, I will guarantee, if there was no video of this, this officer would be cleared, we would not be here talking about it. So, video changes the game. And I will also say that it’s unsurprising when police chiefs defend their officers. That’s always how they do it. And until there’s some accountability, we will continue to see these horrific incidents occur.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Phil Stinson. How typical is this, what you just watched?
PHIL STINSON: Well, we don’t know how typical it is. You know, my research is in the area of police crime. And I can tell you that over the last decade about 10,000 police officers in the United States have been arrested for all sorts of crimes. And of those officers, only about a hundred are school resource officers. So, one of the limitations of my data set is that everybody is arrested, all the officers are arrested. So if they’re not arrested, I don’t really know about it. But this is consistent with what we see in terms of policing in general. You know, policing is violent, and what works on the street probably is not appropriate in a high school.
Now, I do want to comment on the Taser issue. I did a study several years ago on the criminal misuse of Tasers by police officers. And it was a small sample of cases, again, less than a hundred cases. But in that research, what we saw was there’s only a handful of reasons why police officers tase somebody in an inappropriate or criminal way. And what we saw there was a pattern where they often tased teenagers for completely inappropriate reasons, for teenagers that were no threat to the officer at all, almost as if they were tasing them for sport.
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The Armor of Light: New Documentary Makes the Evangelical Case for Gun Reform
A new documentary opening this week focuses on two individuals who form an unlikely alliance to address gun violence in the United States. "The Armor of Light,” by Abigail Disney, follows the evangelical minister Rev. Rob Schenck, an evangelical known for his anti-choice activism, and Lucia McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, the African-American teenager who was shot to death by a middle-aged white man in a gas station parking lot in 2012 after a dispute over loud music. The shooter, Michael Dunn, was later sentenced to life without parole. Schenck describes how McBath inspired him to begin speaking out about gun violence. "It was her passion in the wake of that pain and horror of losing a son to murder that was really what pulled me across the threshold of decision to start speaking to this, even though for me it is at great personal risk," Schenck says. "In our community, when you break with a kind of orthodoxy on social issues — guns being one of them — you are seen as a renegade or as a defector."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to the new documentary, The Armor of Light, about an evangelical minister who begins preaching about the toll of gun violence.
REV. ROB SCHENCK: I’m an evangelical minister. That goes to the core of my identity. My constituency would be conservative—very conservative.
SARAH PALIN: Thank you, NRA! Thank you!
REV. ROB SCHENCK: In my community, we talk about the sanctity of life, the value of every human life.
LUCIA McBATH: When I would hear about shootings, I would pray for the people. But I never thought it would ever happen to us. We have replaced God with our guns.
It’s so important that you help. They will listen to you.
REV. ROB SCHENCK: As a Christian, what are your feelings when I say the phrase, "Christian and guns"?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: The Bible is very plain about a man who don’t protect his wife and kids, is worse than an infidel.
REV. ROB SCHENCK: Is that a pro-life ethic?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 3: Let’s pray. Father, we know there’s a lot of people in this country that would like to register guns and take them away.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: If we take guns away, people will are just going kill people with something else.
REV. ROB SCHENCK: So what we need is Jesus and the gospel—and a side arm.
This doesn’t speak to that.
When faith becomes inseparably linked to a political position, we become vulnerable to selling our souls.
LUCIA McBATH: That’s what this is all about: fighting for life.
REV. ROB SCHENCK: I’m taking a big risk. I could lose my career.
I am here today to challenge my fellow clergy.
Let us cast off the works of darkness—fear, ignorance, hatred, vengeance—and put on the armor of light. Let’s pray.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That’s the trailer to The Armor of Light, a new documentary by Abigail Disney opening this week about guns in America. The film focuses on two individuals: the evangelical minister Reverend Robert Schenck and Lucia McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, the Florida teenager who was killed in 2012 by a middle-aged man in a gas station dispute over loud rap music. The incident began after four teenagers pulled into a Florida gas station to buy gum and cigarettes. They were soon confronted by Michael Dunn, a middle-aged white man who pulled in next to them in the parking lot. Dunn demanded the boys turn down the music they were playing, and became angry when they refused. He pulled his gun from his glove box and shot at their car 10 times, even as they tried to drive away from the danger. The shots rang out three-and-a-half minutes after Dunn had arrived. In the hail of bullets, Jordan Davis was killed. After the shooting, Dunn fled the scene, went to a hotel with his girlfriend and ordered pizza. He never called the police. Dunn was later sentenced to life without parole.
AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Schenck is a well-known conservative minister who heads Faith and Action in Washington, D.C. He’s the president of the National Clergy Council. A longtime anti-choice activist, Reverend Schenck first made national headlines protesting outside abortion clinics as a member of Operation Rescue. Today he’s making headlines for a different reason: his criticism of the NRA and the pro-gun message of many conservatives.
The documentary The Armor of Light chronicles how Reverend Schenck and Lucia McBath began working together to push for gun reform after the killing of Jordan in 2012. Reverend Schenck and Lucia McBath join us in our studio today, along with Abigail Disney, the director of The Armor of Light.
We welcome you all. It is a fascinating documentary. Talk about your first meeting. I mean, Reverend Schenck, this is a true reversal on your part. You espoused gun rights and the importance of gun, God and country. What changed you?
REV. ROB SCHENCK: Well, a number of things. Of course, a change of that magnitude happens over time, and this happened over a lot of time. And I had a growing concern about the attitudes I saw in our evangelical community that held life less than sacred. And that was always our cause. In the pro-life movement, we talk about the sanctity of all human life, every human life, and that’s born and unborn. And when you take a gun in your possession to use for self-defense, you do so with the intention of perhaps killing another human being. I thought we had to address that. But I kind of put it in a sort of closet in my mental space. And it’s a very volatile issue in our community, and so I kind of just secreted it away.
Then a number of events occurred, and then Abigail Disney proposed that maybe I air some of those concerns on camera. That was a little scary, took me a while to say yes to that. And during the course of the film, I met Lucy. And when I met her, in our literal prayer garden, which is a space behind our ministry house on Capitol Hill, her personal experience of tremendous loss, and her being a person of faith—she is—I think you call yourself an evangelical. I think so.
LUCIA McBATH: I am.
REV. ROB SCHENCK: We’re in the same camp that way, so we spoke a common language. But it was her passion in the wake of that pain and horror of losing a son to murder that was really what pulled me across the threshold of decision to start speaking to this, even though for me it is at great personal risk. But—
AMY GOODMAN: Why risk?
REV. ROB SCHENCK: Well, in our community, when you break with a kind of orthodoxy on social issues—guns being one of them—you’re seen as a renegade or as a defector. And this may be of surprise to some people, but Christians are not always the kindest people. And you can be punished for that. And so I have been by a few, but I’ve also been surprised at the number of supporters that have emerged.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And why do you say that this is a volatile issue, that—what is this, from your sense, this connection between the evangelical movement and guns in America?
REV. ROB SCHENCK: Well, a lot of it is driven by fear—I think very unfounded fear. And in fact, I believe that fear is a failure of faith. So it’s really a theological as well as moral crisis in our community. And that fear is based on a lot of—a lot of factors, including fear of government persecution. There’s a lot of call for arms to defend our community against a tyrannical government. I think we live in the freest environment in terms of religious expression on Earth. I’ve been to 41 countries. I’ve never seen any that compare quite to the extent of the liberty we have. So these are, I think, unrealistic, unfounded fears, but nonetheless very real and very powerful.
AMY GOODMAN: Lucia McBath, were you afraid to meet with Reverend Schenck? Here you are, you’re an evangelical, you’re pro-choice, you’re anti-gun. You lost your son to gun violence and racism. You knew Reverend Schenck’s reputation. Talk about that moment where you met.
LUCIA McBATH: Well, I don’t even really think I knew the extent of his reputation. Only information I had is what I read about him in Wikipedia and the little bit of information that I had. But I guess maybe the fear for me was really stepping out in the faith that I had been talking about. And there wasn’t any fear beyond that, but maybe more the fear of not really being heard, not really being heard from the evangelical white conservative community. That was probably the only fear that I had. But despite that, I knew that if he was interested in even beginning discussions about what he was feeling, the stirrings that he had spiritually based upon what’s been happening in the country, then I was really excited to speak with him.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abigail Disney, your decision to try to make this film, to bring these folks together and to tell the story as a way of getting America to deal with gun violence?
ABIGAIL DISNEY: You know, I really have watched this issue for a really long time. It’s a broken, dysfunctional political dynamic. The harder you push on your side, the harder they push on their side. We get frozen in this. And so, I’ve been for years trying to figure out what would be a way to talk about it that would actually make a difference. The facts don’t make a difference. Statistics just don’t persuade anybody. This is a heart issue, and this is about our consciences. And I don’t think we’ve brought the best of our consciences to any of this discussion. So I wanted to kind of elevate it to a place above politics, where we could go back to what we claim our values are around the sanctity of human life and then legislate from there. So, all I’m trying to do is start a conversation.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s fascinating to see you making very different kinds of films than your grandfather, Roy Disney. Reverend Schenck, you talked about the risk you’re taking and the fears you have of becoming a sort of pariah in your own community. So, what’s happened? You are speaking out. The film has come out. How have evangelicals, white evangelicals, responded to you?
REV. ROB SCHENCK: On the whole, very polite. We are a consummately polite people, sometimes maddeningly so because sometimes I’d like to know how people really feel. And there has been a mixed response, although I’ve had a number of supporters of my own organization in Washington, D.C. I had a nonprofit, religiously oriented nonprofit. And a few have notified me, "If you’re going to go down this road, we’re not going with you," and have withdrawn their financial support. And that can be very punishing to a small nonprofit. So I felt that pain. I’ve been called a moron and a fraud. Some feel that I am betraying them.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is the best way to reach evangelicals, considering they had your mindset not—I mean, what you were thinking not so long ago?
REV. ROB SCHENCK: Well, I like to start with Jesus. And I do often wonder aloud what Jesus would do with a gun. And I think most—most evangelicals know deep inside that somehow this is in contradiction to the model and teaching of Christ. And so I raise those questions. For me, this is a moral, ethical and even theological exploration. And I think that’s, you know, arguably—the founder of evangelicalism, John Wesley of the Methodist Church, said that evangelical Christianity is a religion of the heart. So, I think Abby is just—I call her Abby. She’s director Abigail Disney, but I call her Abby, and we have a great friendship. And I think Abby did just the right thing with this film in aiming for the heart rather than the head on this one. I think Lucy’s story, spirituality in general, but specifically biblical spirituality, will win the day—with my camp, anyway—whereas statistics don’t go over very well.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lucy McBath, we have less than a minute, but what has this meant you, the making of this film, after the loss of your son and your efforts to try to affect the nation on gun control and gun violence?
LUCIA McBATH: I think it’s a way to be able to scream to the nation, "Please, as a victim, I know firsthand, you know, the devastation that these kinds of crimes and gun violence are causing in the country. We have to morally and ethically really address what’s happening and not see these cases and incidents as statistics and numbers. And morally, we are accountable to one another."
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. I also want to encourage people to see our hour with Lucia McBath in Sundance, the film that was made about her story, 3 1/2 Minutes, and encourage you to see this film. It’s a different Disney film, The Armor of [Light]. The documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney made it. And, Reverend Schenck, thanks very much for joining us in our studio.
REV. ROB SCHENCK: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: That does it for our show. We have a job opening at Democracy Now! It’s development director. Check our website at democracynow.org. ... Read More →Headlines:
U.S. to Launch "Direct Action on the Ground" in Iraq, Syria
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter says the United States will launch "direct action on the ground" against the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Speaking before a Senate panel, Carter outlined the ramped-up U.S. campaign against ISIL.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter: "The third and final 'R' is raids, signaling that we won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground."
The Pentagon is also intensifying airstrikes against ISIL. And chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, told the Senate panel he would consider recommending more U.S. soldiers be placed with Iraqi troops.
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Turkey Attacks Kurdish Fighters Allied with U.S. Against ISIL
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Yemen: U.S.-Backed Coalition Bombs Doctors Without Borders Hospital
The U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition in Yemen has bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital. Doctors Without Borders said hospital staff and two patients managed to escape as the hospital was hit multiple times over a two-hour period Monday night. The hospital’s roof was marked with the Doctors Without Borders logo, and the GPS coordinates had been shared multiple times with the Saudi-led coalition, most recently just two weeks ago. Doctors Without Borders’ Meguerditch Terzian described the damage.
Dr. Meguerditch Terzian: "Several airstrikes happened in the zone, including the hospital had been hit, and 99 percent of the compound is destroyed now. It was around midnight yesterday, so it was a miracle for me that we didn’t have any victims despite the fact that all the staff were in the hospital. And they were considering that the hospital is a safe place to stay during the night, so it was not the case, unfortunately."
Thousands Rally to Demand Israel Release Palestinians’ Bodies
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South Carolina: Feds Probe Officer’s Arrest of High School Student
Federal authorities have launched a civil rights investigation to determine if a white sheriff’s deputy in South Carolina broke the law when he slammed an African-American high school student to the ground in her classroom. Ben Fields was operating as a school resource officer at Spring Valley High School. Viral video shows him grabbing the student around her neck, flipping both her and her desk to the ground and then dragging her across the floor. The student was arrested. Another student, Niya Kenny, who filmed the assault, was also arrested and held on a $1,000 bail. Kenny spoke to WLTX.
Niya Kenny: "I was in disbelief. I know this girl don’t got nobody, and I couldn’t believe this was happening. I had never seen nothing like that in my life, like a man use that much force on a little girl—a big man, like 300 pounds of full muscle. I was like, 'No way, no way.' Like, you can’t do that to no little girl. I’m talking about, she’s like 5’6". And I was screaming, 'What the F? What the F? Is this really happening?' I was praying out loud for the girl. And I just—I couldn’t believe it was happening. I was just crying, and he was like, 'Well, since you got so much to say, you're coming, too.’ And I was like, 'What?' And he—’What? You want some of this?’ M-mm, just put my hands behind my back."
The incident reportedly began when the student refused to give her teacher her phone. The teacher called an administrator, who summoned Officer Fields to remove the student. Fields has been suspended without pay. We’ll have more on the case after headlines.
South Carolina: Cop Who Killed 19-Year-Old Avoids Criminal Charges
In other news from South Carolina, a local prosecutor says a police officer who fatally shot a white 19-year-old who was sitting in his car will not face criminal charges. Seneca Police Lieutenant Mark Tiller shot Zachary Hammond through the open window of his car in July. Police claim Hammond drove his car at officers after they asked him to put his hands on the wheel during a drug sting. Attorneys for Hammond’s family say he was not given a chance to put his hands up. Federal authorities are still investigating the shooting.
U.N. Condemns U.S. Embargo of Cuba for 24th Year
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Senate Passes Cybersecurity Bill Critics Say Violates Privacy
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Report: Key Chevron Witness in Amazon Pollution Case Admits Lying
A key witness in Chevron’s effort to avoid paying for environmental contamination in the Ecuadorean Amazon has admitted he lied. In 2011, a group of indigenous plaintiffs won a landmark $9 billion judgment for widespread contamination from toxic dumping by Texaco, which Chevron later bought. But last year, in a victory for Chevron, a U.S. judge ruled the plaintiffs used "corrupt means" to win. Much of Chevron’s defense rested on former Ecuadorean Judge Alberto Guerra, who claimed the plaintiffs offered him a $300,000 bribe to ghostwrite the ruling in their favor. But newly released documents from a secret tribunal in Washington show Guerra repudiated many of his allegations and admitted to lying about the bribe. The group Amazon Watch said in a statement: "Guerra has so thoroughly perjured himself he should be behind bars. And so should Chevron management."
Nicaragua: Thousands Flock to Capital to Rally Against Canal
In Nicaragua, thousands of rural residents from across the country flocked to the capital Managua Tuesday to protest the construction of a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The $50 billion project will be larger than the Panama Canal and could displace up to 120,000 people. Farmer Rafael Ángel Bermúdez was among those calling for the repeal of a 2013 law allowing a Chinese firm to expropriate land in order to build the canal.
Rafael Ángel Bermúdez: "I am a producer. They want to take our land with this canal. Here the fight is ours. We don’t want a canal. Get rid of Law 840, and we won’t continue. It’s Law 840 that we want them to get rid of, so we can work in peace and not waste our time here with this march."
Many Nicaraguan residents traveled days to attend the protest in Managua. Police reportedly set up multiple roadblocks in a bid to prevent them from reaching the capital.
Northrop Grumman Wins $20 Billion Contract to Build Bombers
The Pentagon has awarded Northrop Grumman a more than $20 billion contract to build new long-range stealth bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons. It’s the largest Pentagon contract in more than a decade and could eventually be valued at $80 billion and yield 100 new bombers.
Polls Show Carson in the Lead Ahead of GOP Debate
A new poll shows retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has pulled ahead of business mogul Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The New York Times/CBS News poll shows Carson with 26 percent support and Trump with 22 percent. The next Republican debate takes place tonight in Boulder, Colorado.
House to Vote on Budget as GOP Nominates Ryan for House Speaker
And the House is expected to vote on a bipartisan budget deal today as Republicans are set to nominate Wisconsin Congressmember Paul Ryan to become the new House speaker. The two-year budget includes cuts to Social Security disability benefits and Medicare payments to providers. New revenue would come from sales of U.S. strategic oil reserves and the use of public airwaves for telecommunications firms. Senator Rand Paul, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has vowed to filibuster the budget when it reaches the Senate.
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