Excuse Me Miss

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The teen’s arrest was captured on a cellphone video and posted to Facebook. In the video, the teen is heard yelling for help as a school resource officer pushes him against a wall and knees him in the back after taking him to the ground. The videographer said the officer sprayed a chemical irritant in the teen’s face, and the teen is later heard complaining that he was “Maced.”

This happened last week at my school, St. Paul Central High School, in St. Paul Minnesota. This police officer,  (officially titled a police liason / community resource officer who is stationed in our school) has a history of escalating interactions with black students and using excessive physical force. 

The student shown here was a former Central student who had transferred schools, and was visiting to speak to a former teacher about something. He had gone in the wrong door to speak to the teacher, he was supposed to go in the main office door and sign in. But instead of redirecting the student calmly, eyewitnesses say that the officer was antagonizing and intimidating from the start, with the intention of arresting him for trespassing. The student talked back to him and got angry, understandably since many students at my school are wary of our police resource officers due to their history of deplorable conduct, and the officer then resorted to excessive and humiliating physical force. Teachers in my school are insisting the officer was defending himself, even though this 16 year old boy had no weapons, did not have the capacity to harm the officer at all, etc. The officer had no reason whatsoever to conduct himself in this humiliating and forceful manner. He has never responded this way to a white student, despite the fact that I have seen white students talk back to and even shove him. 

This is the reality about resource officers in our schools. They do not de-escalate conflict and violence, they incite it disproportionately against black students. They repeatedly escalate situations. They do not improve the safety of the school climate at all. 

This is a 16 year old teenage boy, being manhandled and humiliated and arrested with disgusting force by a man twice his size who couldn’t possibly be in any danger from him. None of the articles I have seen will say his name. I am not sure if this is because the family has not consented to release it, or for other reasons. 

To point out a couple of things from the video:

1. The officer wrenches his shoulder so hard he yells in pain.

2. The officer repeatedly tells him to put his hands behind his back, despite exerting physical force on his back so that he cannot realistically comply, and then escalates the physical harassment. 

3. The white woman in the video telling the onlooking student (Nelson Moroukian) to stop filming is a Central High School administrator. She is deliberately trying to obstruct the legal taping of an officer on duty. She is standing by while a 16 year old child is physically terrorized, and telling a student to stop filming it. So far, nobody has tried to hold her accountable for those actions either. 

4. The officer’s name is Bill Kraus. The administrator’s name is Teri Lensch. There should be no anonymity around their deplorable actions.