In October 2015, a Black 16-year-old in Spring Valley High School, South Carolina, was trapped in a headlock, flipped over, and dragged across her classroom by a school police officer when she refused to surrender a cellphone. Her classmates recorded the incident on their phones. One of those videos went viral, and Deputy Sheriff Ben Fields, called “Officer Slam” by students, was exposed.
However, the girl and her classmate who recorded the video were arrested and sent to juvenile detention on the grounds of “disturbing a school function,” a law later ruled to be unconstitutionally vague.
A report by the Advancement Project analyzed 460 school policing assaults against students by police officers and security guards in the 2023-24 school year. It found that 1,072 students were assaulted between the 2013-14 and 2023-24 school years, and Black students comprise 84% of school policing assault victims.
The report, “#AssaultAt: The Legacy of Lynching in School Policing,” was written by Tyler Whittenberg, deputy director of the Opportunity to Learn Program at the Advancement Project, and Kaneesha Johnson, 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 said.
“They are quite the opposite. Instead, students are going to school each day in fear of policing assaults, sexual violence, and criminalization.”
The study compares data from two lynching datasets from 1882 to 1936. Its aim is to assess the correlation between the Southern era of lynching and modern violence against students by school police and security guards, which disproportionately targets Black people.
With a rise in the frequency of lynchings in a county, the number of policing assaults also rose. For example, for every additional 100 lynchings in a county, an additional four students are assaulted, with Black students making up a majority of them.
Moreover, more than half (56%) of such assaults occurred in Black and Latino majority schools. Again, schools in the South make up the bulk (54%) of those experiencing policing assaults.
“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.
Assaults methods:
- Physical assaults (39%)
- Assaults with a weapon (35%)
- Sexual assaults (25%)
The study focuses on the key aspect behind such discriminatory behaviors toward Black students: Police officers perceived Black boys as four and a half years older than their actual age and less childlike than white boys of the same age, according to a study. Moreover, adults perceive Black girls as less innocent and do not need as much support and protection as their white peers.
The authors argue school policing will not reduce violence but will, instead, increase the number of Black students to be pushed out of schools, arrested, and placed in youth and adult criminal legal systems.
This article originally appeared in the Houston Defender.