Report Reveals Black Students Face 84% of School Policing Assaults

By Houston Defender | Word In BlackThis& post& was originally published on& Defender NetworkCredit: Jordan Andrews/Unsplash(WIB) – 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. Meanwhile, 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.Eighty-four percent.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...