For a child to succeed in any area of life as an adult, he or she must start learning early. This is true in academics and athletics, and apparently it is true when it comes to creating an irrational fear of cops and training people of color to become accustomed to police abuse.
In New York City schools, a “child in crisis” is defined as a child who is “displaying signs of emotional distress,” and so the student is removed from the classroom and taken to a hospital for evaluation. In some cases, school officials are forced to call the New York City Police Department to handle such issues, and police sometimes use handcuffs to subdue a child. Whenever cops use handcuffs on students, under New York law, it must be reported.
When the New York Civil Liberties Union looked at school data for 2016, there were 262 recorded crises during which police used handcuffs on children at school. Of these 262 incidents, 259 involved students who were black or Hispanic, the NYCLU reported Monday.
“When a child is handcuffed, the child is humiliated,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “It’s incompatible with the safe and supportive learning environment a school is supposed to provide.”
Instead of accusing the NYPD of racism—as people did when Eric Garner curiously died when a police officer, Daniel Pantaleo (who already had been accused of excessive use of force), gave him a loving embrace, or when data showed that 83 percent of the people stopped and frisked in 2015 were black or Latino—maybe one should consider the only other alternative: Maybe black and Hispanic students are more dangerous and unruly than white kids.
Aside from prejudice, that is the only logical explanation, right?
The NYCLU’s information analysis also showed that in 2016, civilians made 208 complaints against school safety officers. A total of 89 of the complaints were for use of force, 15 of them were for abuse of authority, 17 for offensive language and 87 for discourtesy.
Not one officer was handcuffed.
Read more at the NYCLU.