pecunium

Have they lost their damn minds? If I were that girl's momma, I'd be suing the school district, the security company and the guards personally.

I hope they feel all manly now that they beat up a teenage girl.

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Fortunately, there are still good schools to be found. I am far more satisfied with the education my kids are getting at their public school than the education I got at a Catholic grammar school, especially in terms of how they treat bullying and how the teachers treat the kids.

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Actually, the mother is under arrest from a bit of shoving which took place when she showed up, with her lawyer, to demand an arrest of the guard.

It's not clear if her being fired from a job at a different school is related to this.

TK

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akirlu.livejournal.com

Good god. I'm thinking a letter or phone call to the principal would not be out of line.

Knight High School: 37423 70th Street East ▪ Palmdale, CA 93552 ▪ (661)533-9000

Also a note or call to the Superintendent of the Antelope Valley Joint Union High School District may be in order:

Antelope Valley Joint Union High School District: (661)948-7655 * Fax (661)942-8744 * 44811 Sierra Hwy., Lancaster, CA 93534-3226 * Dr. David J. Vierra, Superintendent. Ext. 225

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I am beyond outraged. There is so much wrong with this behavior I don't even know where to start. The school should have had the guard arrested, and he should be charged with aggravated assault. He belongs in jail. The school should be publicly talking about what changes they're making to their security, considering this kind of problem does not happen without an endemic attitude problem among the guard staff. And the school's lawyers should have already made a really mighty settlement offer to this child's family for what the guard did. Last, the school's PR people ought to be working overtime trying to figure out how they're going to repair this mess and exactly what kind of apology the security head, the principal, and the district superintendant are going to be delivering and on how many local news channels.

Instead, the school seems to be holding to a party line that there is some actual excuse for this behavior. What the hell is wrong with these people?

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Considering the school's previous actions, I would not be at all surprised if they had trumped up the shoving charges too.

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I don't like the lines of thinking I'm having about what wouldn't be out of line. There's going to be something tomorrow. I wish I thought it would be as large as the Jena 6 rally of last week.

[Unknown site tag] has a post up about McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom (a really good book) and the ways in which the Whigs attempts to appease/make nice to the South created all the little strains which made the actual Civil War more likely.

He draws a parallel to the present Dems.

The system is painfully out of balance.

TK

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szkbrust is the bad tag (I wish I could edit, at least my, comments).

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http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=local&id=5680117

Stories I've seen said it was a food fight.

Doesn't make it right, but it does change the whole tone of everything.

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I disagree with you. I don't think it changes the tone of anything at all.

The issue is not "what happened before that," at this point. The issue is that during a non-violent, non-weapons or drugs related incident, a security officer caused serious bodily injury to a student.

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starcat-jewel.livejournal.com

It doesn't "change the tone" of anything at all. Since when is violent physical assault, physical injury, and racist commentary an appropriate response to a food fight, forghodsake?

Actually, what this sounds like to me is the beginning of the Big Lie media smear which will end up in claims that the school was justified in charging the STUDENT WHOSE ARM WAS BROKEN with "battery". First it's a food fight instead of her dropping a piece of cake. Next it'll be a "gang-related fight in the cafeteria,", and the next story will spotlight the girl's (made up from whole cloth) "previous record as a disciplinary problem". And by the end of it, that'll be all anyone remembers, and it'll be Business As Usual at the school.

What the HELL kind of school hires skinheads as security guards, anyhow?

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I heard the food fight story first, a day or two ago.

I never said it was appropriate, did I? It's just that everyone has an agenda. No one source can be trusted.

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elf

What the HELL kind of school hires skinheads as security guards, anyhow?

Poor ones. How much money would a school have to offer you to work as a security guard for 16-year-olds? Or, if you're not the security guard type (I'm certainly not)... how much money would they have to offer

pecunium, who's plenty physically fit for the job, and (I presume) fully capable of keeping order without being violent?

Schools offer less for security guards than banks, so they get people who are willing to work for less than banks will pay.

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No but leaving things out makes it look like people were hiding things. Not that it matters, IT WAS STILL WRONG. It's just me pointing out that everyone has an agenda when shit like this happens.

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The screened comment was mine, browser won't keep me logged in.

Was he a skinhead or just shaved his head? Are all bald men skinheads? Hope not!

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elf

From the article:
Pleajhai also says that the security guard in the picture yelled "hold still nappy-head" at her, which at the time she did not know was a racist comment.

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Yes. Very racist. It's just the whole skinhead thing. Not all skinheads are racist, not all bald people are skinheads, its a leap from racist asshole security guard to school purposely hiring racist skinheads.

Although of course after the whole Jena 6 thing, I'd almost think that such a thing WOULD happen.

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antonia-tiger.livejournal.com

skzbrust?

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Hoo-boy. Lots of heat.

Me, I don't care if it was a food fight. Honestly, looking at the story, I don't buy it. Where are the other suspenstion, expulsions, detentions.

This single kid is the only person who seems to be identified for cleaning up, and it's one piece of cake.

The footage doesn't show any food littering the area. No one has food on their clothes.

So, lookig at agendas, the school has one in making up a justification for a broken bone. The students who took the footage, who were supsended, what did they do? It doesn't appear to be for taking part in a food fight.

When I was in school it wasn't guards, it was cops. We had three of them; for a population of 3,000; 1/3rd of whom were bussed in from the inner city.

The school before that was in "the inner city" (barrio, not ghetto, but there wasn't a class which made it to graduation without at least 2 dead, and half a dozen in jail). We had two cops for 3,000, and an open campus.

They were, at both schools, nice guys. Friendly, had a sense of play. This would never have happened. One of the cops in my junior year was new. He got too close (he was 24) and was transferred out.

Even when the occasional thing got out of hand, they showed up, and turned the offender over to the school. The only thing they ever arrested anyone for was drugs (and they ignore the cigarettes).

TK

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Steve Brust.

Author of the Taltos series, as well as the Paarfi Romances.

With Emma Bull he wrote an epistiolary novel in Victorian England about labor relations and magic (which is a crappy summation).

His other stuff is great too (Athyra, The Sun, The Moon and the Stars [a great book about the writing process] To Reign in Hell [Paradise Lost, from Satan's POV, sort of).

And his Lj is the blog where McPherson's book is being discussed. I screwed up the tag.

TK

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Everyone does have an agenda. The school's appears to be covering their ass at all costs. And, as

pecunium points out in a later comment, the "food fight" story seems to contradict the footage. Why isn't everyone covered with food, if that's the case?

I think the original story, that she dropped some cake and gave the security goon an attitude about cleaning it up, which apparently prompted him to break her wrist while using excessive force to arrest her, is probably closer to the truth. I think the food fight thing is the school trying to make it sound like this was justifiable.

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fjm.livejournal.com

No, it doesn't. A kids' food fight is something to send in the dinner ladies for. Not armed security guards. Are you that frightened of teenagers?

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fjm.livejournal.com

And frankly, UK schools have been using scary looking dinner ladies (mostly women in their 30s-50s) to intimidate teens for the past 100 yrs and it still seems pretty effective.

Most of the evidence in violence prone situations by the way (ie night clubs) is that the presence of large male security guards escalates the tension. Women police officers are often far better at defusing situations than men. doesn't stop people from hiring large male muscle tho.

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martin-wisse.livejournal.com

Yes, security guards, let alone cops in school is just mindboggling to me. We just have teachers, concierges and custodial staff.

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antonia-tiger.livejournal.com

Well, a school with 3000 pupils is big enough to justify some sort of professional policing, just on numbers. It may also be way too big,combining a limited age-range with too many people to avoid politics.

But it does look like a sign of a broken society. What next? Battle Royale?

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Yes, I'm terrified of them, I'm a scared racist white girl who loves to beat on teens of color. Do you feel better now?

Have you ever been to an out of control school? Or did you go to a nice little prep school with 'dinner ladies'? You know, the whole 'white people on white horses rescuing people' condescending BS drives me up a wall. It's PATRONIZING. Fight the good fight for us, we need you *bats eyelashes*.

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It wouldn't be surprising if the school was doing that. The force was not justifiable. Rarely is, with children. But they never want to put money into them until it is too late -- a security guard that works with teens would need EXTRA training I would think, because you would expect more sticky situations.

Hell, even 20 years ago, as I was crying out in pain from cramps in my Brooklyn school, in the hall, the security guard was yelling to PRAY THE PAIN AWAY! And if I wasn't fornicating, God wouldn't have been punishing me like that.

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fjm.livejournal.com

I apologise, because I didn't make it clear that "You" was meant as a generic, "is society". I did not mean it as an attack.

But as it happened, I went to a very rough school in the UK city of Birmingham.

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inflectionpoint.livejournal.com

may I link to this?

I'll be sending letters signed FirstName LastName, Ph.D.

I'd like to link to this and see if I can get others who read my stuff to write a letter or call. These people should apologise to the child and her parents. In public. At the very least.

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Working with teens is a lot like working with cats. No one ever got any lasting good result from smacking a cat, even if it appeared that the cat richly deserved it. And they will insist on testing the patience of authority figures.

I went to Catholic school. I suspect the nuns would have suggested offering up your suffering to Jesus, which is just about as useless as praying it away. At least it's possible a nun might have had cramps at some point, unlike a male security guard.

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starcat-jewel.livejournal.com

Nice try, but this school isn't particularly poor. And the really poor schools tend to be heavily-minority, and they won't even THINK about hiring skinheads for reasons which should be tolerably obvious.

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akirlu.livejournal.com

As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to link to my comment. No permission needed, really, but it's nice to know that you would like to.

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That's not the most ethnically tolerant part of the state. :/ (On the other hand, it's probably more tolerant than some. Folks think of California as a sort of liberal wonderland at times.)

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Palmdale's not a poor place. It's not loaded, but that's not inner-city Compton, that's the desert suburbs.

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It varies a lot by school. I've always assumed that if I had a kid, whether it was homeschooled, publicschooled, or privateschooled would depend on our kid and what was available at the time. In most places I've lived, I'd choose homeschooling, but other, better options come up now and then.

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I think high schools with more than 500 students are too big. (I went to five high schools within a huge variety of sizes, and I'm speaking only from experience, not research.)

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All power to those who can do it and do a good job of it, but I don't have the patience, organization or self-discipline required for good homeschooling. Plus, we live out in the country, so if my kids didn't go to school, they'd hardly ever get to see other kids. Lastly, the only homeschooling support group in my area is religiously-oriented and those folks would not like me and vice-versa.

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antonia-tiger.livejournal.com

It's what the anthropologists call a dialectal tribe. You can maybe push it to a thousand. Looks a lot like an infantry battalion, too.

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For my part, everything public is public. I prefer a link, to go with quotations, but there's not a lot I can do about enforcing that.

So even if

akirlu (to whom thanks for the information) did mind, well; it's a public comment to a public post.

TK

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Right, it's certainly not for all families, or even all kids within one family.

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