Shackling video ignites debate on school discipline - The Courier
“You don’t get to swing at me like that,” a deputy says to the 8-year-old child, the interaction caught by a video camera. The video – entered as Exhibit A in a lawsuit the ACLU filed against the school, the sheriff and the officer – rocketed across the Internet on Tuesday and was shown again and again on cable news, reigniting a fierce debate over aggressive policing... The sheriff defended his deputy while experts insisted that children shouldn’t be treated like adult criminals and bemoaned the lack of standardized regulations for restraining children. “It was hard to breath,” David Shapiro, who leads the National Juvenile Defender Center’s campaign against child shackling, said of his reaction when he first saw the video. That’s not the way to treat any child, in school, in court, or anywhere. Oh, no, this is not good,” groaned Steven C. Teske, a Georgia juvenile court judge who has led the charge to reduce restraints in schools, as he watched the video for the first time while on the phone with The Associated Press. The lawsuit filed by two mothers alleges that school resource officer Kevin Sumner, a Kenton County deputy sheriff, handcuffed two children, the 8-year-old boy in the video and another 9-year-old girl in schools in the Covington Independent School... Source: thecourier.com
