Every time I go on social media or turn to a news station, I see a middle or high school student brought down in some way by law enforcement.

Seeing these videos make me think: do we really need police guards at our schools?

Of course we do. We can’t just get rid of all security officers and risk the safety of adolescent students because of some exaggerated incidents.

A video circulated the Internet on Monday, Oct. 26 of a high school girl in South Carolina who was dragged from her desk by Richland County Sheriff Deputy and school resource officer, Ben Fields.

“‘You’re either going to come with me, or I’m going to make you,’ said Fields,” according to a CNN article relaying the incident.

“When she remains seated, he tells her, ‘Come on, I’m going to get you up,’ before picking her up from the desk and throwing her to the floor.

As he continues to try to restrain her, she is thrown several feet across the classroom as Fields tells her repeatedly to put her hands behind her back,” the article continued.

The fact of the matter is that we see the climax of these videos, but not what happens before it reached that level.

“Yes, I feel bad for these kids but a police officer doesn’t just come inside the classroom and drag you out for no reason, there are always three sides to the story, the student’s side, the cop’s side, and the truth, but the truth is the most difficult to figure out,” said student Lawrence Robinson.
Children nowadays don’t respect nor fear authority.

There is obviously a reason why there was this so called child abuse—the child isn’t a saint.
On Monday, Nov. 2 a video posted through social media services displayed a group of high school kids in Chicago tormenting a substitute teacher.

The poor woman looked scared for her life as one student tried to smack her across the face with a bag of candy and threatened to hit her with a desk.

No one helped the substitute teacher.

One student just recorded the entire thing while the other students in the classroom watched.
All parties involved are equally at fault for how the incidents unfold.

Should Fields be punished and ridiculed for doing his job? I think not.

I can see why people, especially parents, don’t think that the officers are needed in the classroom.
Officers are supposed to protect children from danger, but in these videos, the children are the ones getting hurt.

Police officers must be taught how to handle these kinds of situations especially when there always seems to be someone recording their every move.

Instead of one officer sent to handle the situation, maybe there needs to be more than one officer in the room at a time.

Having the presence of another officer might put the fear in the students enough to move themselves or the police might be able to escort the child in a gentler manner.

Having police cameras on the police officers at all times might be a positive alternative.
Leaders of the school district can access the video and be able to expose what really happened in the video.

“L.A. has drawn headlines in recent months for its plan to put a body camera on every officer who works in the field. Smaller agencies use body cameras and bigger agencies are testing them out, but the LAPD is poised to become the largest in the country to deploy the devices on a large scale,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

These should also be implemented for officers present at school.

I’d rather have a police officer always on the grounds of a school in case of emergencies rather than not having any police force at all.

Kids are at school to learn and if someone is stopping the learning process by being rude and disruptive, they should be taken out of the classroom, but if the child doesn’t want to willingly walk out when asked to, a cop has the right to use force (gentle force) because these are kids—not criminals.