Where Your Children Are florida, Miscellaneous

Another school resource officer assaults a child

willardmiller_mug

A school resource officer in slammed a Florida high school student to the floor in September and has finally been charged with in the incident.

Deputy Willard Miller, 38, is seen on Cross Creek High School surveillance video grabbing a 15-year-old female student by the neck and then slamming her to the floor in what appears to be a clear case of abuse of power and no fear of consequences. Miller was quickly removed from the school and placed on “restrictive administrative assignment,” but it took another month before he was suspended without pay, pending the results of an investigation. He finally turned himself in on Tuesday, when he was formally charged with child abuse without great bodily harm. He was released on $5000 bond.

Broward County School District is no stranger to violence in schools, having been the district where last year’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School left 17 people dead and 17 more injured. An investigation into the shooting found that up to 8 school resource officers ignored protocol that might have saved the lives of students and teachers by attempting to disarm the shooter and allowing additional paramedics into the building to treat the wounded. The shooting remains the deadliest high school shooting in United States history.

Miller was in the employment of the county sheriff’s department since 2016, and has served the high school since 2018. He had no prior disciplinary record.

Cross Creek High School in Pompano Beach, Florida, has a rating of 1/10 on GreatSchools, citing low test scores and poor college readiness. It has a predominately non-white minority student population of nearly 70%. Eighty-four percent of students are considered to be from low-income households. The student suspension rate is abnormally high. It is known as being a school for those with emotional or behavioral problems.

Broward County school officer accused of slamming 15-year-old student to ground

Florida Deputy Charged With Child Abuse After Throwing 15-Year-Old to Ground

Stoneman Douglas High School shooting

Cross Creek School – GreatSchools

Where Your Children Are alabama, florida, michigan, mississippi, ohio, tennessee

School Resource Officers, “pillars of the community”

Just a few news articles about school resource officers over the past couple weeks.

9/23/2019 – Florida school resource officer arrests, handcuffs 6-year-old girl
School resource officer fired after arresting 6-year-olds(“She was having a tantrum,” so apparently police were called in. Their hands were bound with zip ties, they were fingerprinted and charged with battery. But the officer was fired, so I guess all’s well that ends well, right?)

9/24/2019 – School resource officer faces charge after student said he choked him (A Mississippi SRO was placed on administrative leave. The student says he was pushed into the ladies’ restroom and choked. The SRO insists it’s all a lie. Witnesses, including two teachers, corroborate the student’s story.)

9/26/2019 – Alabama grandmother alleges SRO harassed middle school student (An SRO approached a group of children in the lunch room and asked “Which one of y’all’s daddies have I not arrested yet?” When a girl responded that her father hadn’t been arrested, the SRO responded with, “That’s because you don’t know who your daddy is.” This officer has an apparent history of harassing students, yet he remains on duty.)

10/1/2019 – Lawsuit alleges disabled Parma student was sprayed with drink by school resource officer prior to suspension (Ohio parents filing the lawsuit claim they have audio proving the SRO sprayed the child with a juice box as they waited for the principal. They are also claiming discrimination – the student is American, but of Arab descent. Many of these incidents involving SRO’s are allegedly racially motivated.)

10/4/2019 – Jasper Middle School resource officer resigns after probe into texts with students (The Tennessee SRO resigned even though there was found to be “nothing inappropriate” about texting middle school students at all hours of the day and night.)

10/4/2019 – School resource officer sentenced to 1 year in jail for sexually assaulting 3 high school students (A Michigan SRO pleaded no contest to charges such as criminal sexual assault of a minor, assault, and misconduct in office. One of his victims had aspirations of becoming a police officer. Now she is scarred for life. He gets a whopping year in prison.)

This woman gets it. Her article about the need to eliminate school resource officers is spot on, and advocates for the students SRO’s do not. Schools infringe on civil liberties as they are, but school resource officers only compound the issue.

Where Your Children Are arkansas

Caught on video: student resource officer chokes, handcuffs high school student

handcuffs

Student resource officers are little more than glorified CO’s at the prison that is public school. While supposedly intended to promote good relations between inner city and low-income students and police officers (assuming that they are destined to deal with them regularly in the future?), these officers regularly abuse their positions, and children have little to no rights when it comes to dealing with them.

This time, it was all captured on a cell phone camera, the video taken once things became violent. A’kayla Johnson spoke about the incident with reporters, saying, “He choked me and drug me in the hallway. I couldn’t breathe while he was choking me.”

Bobby Burnett, the officer in question, is a former chief of police who was fired from that job, and wound up working at the school. He “detained” Miss Johnson apparently because she was loitering on Brinkley High School property after hours, even after she attempted to explain she was waiting for a ride home.

Johnson is now reportedly afraid to come back to school and wishes for the resource officer to be punished. School officials are, as usual, “looking into the incident,” and assure parents the district is just as concerned as they are.

Brinkley Public Schools serves 534 students in two schools in Brinkley, Arkansas. Over 65% of its students are ethnic minorities, and it is well below the state average for reading and math test scores. Brinkley is the same school district that just last month sent out a letter to parents telling them of a reported gun on one of their school buses, so maybe they feel a real need for police presence.

VIDEO: Mid-South high school student choked, handcuff by student resource officer

Brinkley School District – Public School Review