Jan 7, 2025 Story by: Editor
In October 2015, a Black 16-year-old student at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina was forcibly put in a headlock, flipped over, and dragged across her classroom by a school police officer after refusing to hand over her cellphone. The incident, captured on video by her classmates, quickly went viral, exposing Deputy Sheriff Ben Fields, nicknamed “Officer Slam” by students.
Despite being victims, the girl and the student who recorded the incident were arrested and detained in juvenile detention, charged with “disturbing a school function.” This law was later declared unconstitutionally vague.
A report by the Advancement Project documented 460 instances of school policing assaults during the 2023-24 school year. The findings revealed that between the 2013-14 and 2023-24 school years, 1,072 students were assaulted by police officers or security guards in schools, with Black students accounting for a staggering 84% of these victims.
The report, titled “#AssaultAt: The Legacy of Lynching in School Policing,” was authored by Tyler Whittenberg, deputy director of the Opportunity to Learn Program at the Advancement Project, and Kaneesha Johnson, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill.
“The alarming spike in assaults against students by school police and security guards underscores the troubling reality that our schools are not safe, equitable, or nurturing environments for students, particularly for Black and disabled youth,” Whittenberg stated. “They are quite the opposite. Instead, students are going to school each day in fear of policing assaults, sexual violence, and criminalization.”
The report draws parallels between school policing assaults and historical lynchings, using lynching datasets from 1882 to 1936. It aims to demonstrate how the legacy of Southern lynching correlates with contemporary violence by school police, disproportionately impacting Black students.
For every additional 100 lynchings in a county, four more students are assaulted, with Black students making up the majority. Additionally, more than half (56%) of these assaults occurred in predominantly Black and Latino schools, with Southern schools comprising 54% of the incidents.
The states with the highest number of reported assaults were:
- Florida (53)
- Texas (39)
- North Carolina (34)
- California (26)
- South Carolina (24)
“This report reveals a deeply entrenched legacy of racial violence rooted in historical lynchings and its link to modern policing practices in our educational institutions. It’s time to dismantle the myth that policing makes schools safer and confront the systemic injustices that put our most vulnerable students at risk,” Whittenberg added.
The methods of assault included:
- Physical assaults (39%)
- Assaults with a weapon (35%)
- Sexual assaults (25%)
The study highlights one underlying cause of these discriminatory practices: biases in how police officers and adults perceive Black children. Research shows that Black boys are often viewed as four and a half years older than they are, and less childlike than their white peers. Similarly, Black girls are perceived as less innocent and less in need of protection compared to white girls.
The report argues that school policing does not make schools safer but instead contributes to pushing Black students out of educational environments, increasing their likelihood of being arrested and entering the criminal justice system. Source: Miami Times Online
