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NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks
Releases Statement on South Carolina School Resource Officer
BALTIMORE, MD,
October 27, 2015 – NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks
released the following statement after video surfaced of a school
resource officer violently taking down a young teenage girl in her
Columbia, S.C. classroom:
“The video we have seen of a school
resource officer violently flipping, tossing and thereafter banging
the head of a young girl in her South Carolina classroom is
offensive. The videos shot by students display in morally vulgar
vividness an unacceptable level of brutality and misuse of force.
This type of brutality deserves no place in modern policing – it is
even more outrageous that it would occur in a high school classroom.
This young student may have broken school rules, but there is
nothing that indicates she broke any criminal laws or was a physical
threat to anyone at the level that would require this officer to
treat her like a violent criminal. This is yet another example of
the misuse of force and the exceedingly disproportionate contact of
resource officers with young minority students.
“This officer’s actions in front of a room full of young teenagers
will no doubt have a devastating impact emotionally on the young
victim and her classmates. It is our hope that these students are
provided with counseling after witnessing and experiencing such a
violent encounter. Those who provide security in our schools should
only hold those positions after rigorous and thorough training,
education and strict oversight. It is even more disturbing that the
guidance crafted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S.
Department of Education on the use of Resource Officers in our
Nation’s schools have clearly not been implemented in this public
high school.
“This is also a clear indication that the shifts in resource and
spending by school districts have created an over-reliance on armed
police instead of educated and trained school administrators. It is
unfortunate that our school principals and vice principals, the
traditional administrators of discipline, have been put in a
position to rely on street policing inside our school classrooms
rather than administering tried and true education discipline
tactics. There is no acceptable explanation for this officer’s
treatment of this young student. The NAACP applauds federal
officials on their announcement of a full investigation and demands
that this officer be terminated and never again employed in a
position where he has any law enforcement encounter responsibility
with the public.”
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