Source: Columbia Tribune, 2008

According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from 1991 to 2000,
arrests of girls increased more (or decreased less) than arrests of boys for most types
of offenses. By 2004, girls accounted for 30 percent of all juvenile arrests…Available evidence strongly suggests that girls are, over time, being arrested more frequently for simple assaults, despite evidence from longitudinal self-report and victimization surveys that they are not actually more violent.
Source: Girls Study Group (PDF)

I still remember the video of the student in a university library being TAZER’d. He fell to the ground, cried, begged, but the university police let him have it. Again and again, we have law enforcement officers using force. If you go on YouTube, you can find videos of police stepping over the line once too many times.

Citizen-journalists–mainly our students–are finding news-worthy events to report on in K-12 schools. How common will this line be below in future news stories?

Another student captured the incident on his digital camera, and a video has been posted online and sent to media outlets.
(Read Source – Columbia Tribune)

or this separate incident:
The incident…was caught on a cell phone camera by another pupil who was then also assaulted by the security guards. (Source)

In spite of citizen-journalism to the contrary, I sympathize with police because in a very real way, they are in harm’s way so that I can live a “safe”–it’s an illusion–life. And, I’m grateful for that. Why am I considering this? Well, when I hear a new account of police officers responding with force in the media, it all ends up getting lumped together…and then I have to back down and separate it.

Justin (The Edjurist) highlights an event that took place at a high school:; no child was tazered but violence to restrain the student was. Justin writes:

The thing is, it is exactly the kind of conduct that we expect from cops, isn’t it? The way he took that girl down and handcuffed her was textbook and had it been in any other setting rather than a school, he would be getting high fives from everyone.

Cops are trained to fight violence with violence. To react quickly and harshly. To control the situation at all costs, including, if necessary, the ultimate violent act (the cop in that video was carrying a gun). In schools, cops are violence contributors – they are there to do what the teacher’s cannot. Now, maybe they deter more violence in the end and that is a kind of lesser evil choice we need to make. But, we have to continue to ask ourselves whether we want that kind of reactionary mentality in our schools. And that is a really hard question.

Justin’s (The Edjurist) question makes sense. Is this what we want in schools today? This zero tolerance, in your face response to inappropriate reactions? The question is hard because we have to consider the wide variety of “customers” or clientele public schools have to serve. Some definitely merit the negative attention police are required to provide them. When you step into a public school, you don’t know if the kids are going to be armed and ready to hurt others.

My daughter, a high school student, reported the viciousness with which two girls went after each other in the cafeteria a month ago. “I couldn’t believe it, they were hitting with fists, kicking” and it was generally a brawl. It took several school officials to get them separated.

Brawls between girls “have gotten a lot worse and are much more of a problem” than fights between boys, said Waid Allred, a Santa Rosa school resource officer.
Source: Girls & Violence

What’s the profile of a punching, kicking girl and how is it different from a shooter? For one, most shooters are male.

Boys are two to three times more likely to carry weapons, and girls are more likely to use knives than guns, boys’ weapon of choice. Girls are more likely than boys to murder someone as a result of a conflict rather than during a crime, and to murder and fight with family members (Girls Incorporated, 1996)

Perhaps the definitive piece cited in this blog entry is the Girls Study Group. Why are girls being arrested more, slammed on the ground more? And, how do we feed this aggression against girls with zero tolerance policies in schools?

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