After a student brought a gun to school two years ago, administrators have continued to ask students: “Do you feel safe at school?” Truthfully, after I saw a girl pee herself when she lost all muscle function from being tasered, the answer is no.
I was a sophomore, still coming to grips with Grady and how it worked, when a fight broke out on my way to the trailers. I was close to the two girls who fought, and I saw one of the campus police officers pull out the taser and taser one of the girls. She was immediately paralyzed and crashed to the floor. She was drooling, then shaking while a pool of pee surrounded her. I saw her face and she looked utterly terrified. I was shocked.
Through my four years at Grady, I’ve witnessed events that I’ll never forget, and they’ve shaken me to the core. I’ve seen a police officer use unnecessary force in reaction to a student mumbling under his breath. A year ago, according to WSB-TV and Fox News, two 12-year-old girls, one with heart complications, were tasered at Inman Middle School by a police officer.
Every time I see a police officer walking down the hallway, I shudder and want to walk in the other direction. I’m not doing anything suspicious. I’m not skipping class or getting high off drugs, but I am wary of being profiled and stereotyped into a character that I’m not. I’m tired of the media and authority figures portraying teenagers as troublesome, defiant, slacking, binge-drinking, and one-size-fits-all. I’ve seen students who wear a style of clothing and have a different hairstyle be judged into a stereotype, considered suspicious, and as a result are scrutinized by school police.
Several years ago, cases of officers tasering students to break up a fight were rare. But now, students seem to be getting tasered at the first sign of behavioral problem. According to a 2011 report from the National Institute of Justice, use of conducted energy devices, or CED’s, such as tasers, by police officers has risen significantly over the past few years. From 2005 to 2008, of the tactics used by police officers to subdue suspects, 70 percent were CED’s.
These days, tasers seem to be a cop’s’ best friend on the school campus. In the name of efficiency, the use of unnecessary violence has started to become the first option. Since TASER International was originally founded by brothers Rick and Tom Smith in 1991, more than 500,000 law enforcement officers in the U.S carry Tasers, and more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies use them. With the recent fights that have broken out at Grady, tasers seem to be the weapon of choice. Over the past couple of months fights at Grady have spiked, and of the ones I’ve witnessed, tasering seem to be the preferred choice of weapon when breaking kids up. But the fights aren’t subduing. Maybe a different approach is needed besides inflicting excruciating pain on students, because while intimidating and aggressive tactics are used, there will be no trust between students and school authorities.
There needs to be a balance between too little and too much protection. We undoubtedly need police at our school to keep potentially dangerous strangers from walking in the school and from all the dangers that can happen in a public school in the heart of downtown Atlanta. But is there a threshold where “protection” and control can negatively impact the atmosphere of the school and threaten the students in it? When law enforcement becomes the issue instead of the solution, more problems are created and fueled instead of calmed down.
There is an abundance of videos on the internet displaying law enforcement officers voluntarily being tasered in order to prove that the weapon does not permanently injure the body. However, tasers have more potential to be harmful when used on suspects. There are too many variables that impact how the taser affects the tased. These officers are healthy, mature adults in a calm environment with no drugs in their systems. Every officer in the taser videos had people on either side of them to hold and lower the officer to the ground safely as they were paralyzed to prevent injury on the way to the ground.
Adolescents who are tasered are most commonly in an environment with high stress levels, elevated heart rates, and possibly with drugs or alcohol in their system. There is no officer on either side of them to properly and safely lay them on the ground.
Instead of using the painful taser on students in a fight, basic conventional procedures could suffice in fights at Grady. I don’t think any cop is able to make an appropriate decision as to whether to taser a student at school in the few seconds he or she has to analyze a situation, and the consequences of making the wrong decision are too high to allow.
From witnessing all these actions, I worry about our safety in school. The increased intensity of altercations between authority figures and students has reached a level of concern that cannot be ignored for much longer. I’ve questioned whether to come to school or not for fear of scrutinization the next day. I’ve followed the rules of a discipline-based education system, and stood back and watched as poor decisions are made by the people we are supposed to trust.
