Here's the article, with a video of the incident at the bottom - be sure to watch it.

The question is, is what the principal did acceptable?

At first, while I was reading the article I was assuming both the kid and parents were being whiney about the incident, but after watching the video, it was a fairly aggressive encounter but maybe that's what kids need?

pfftt the punk was restrained. I saw nothing excessive in the video.

Hard to say based on the video and no one seems to be talking about what lead up to it.

What I can see...

1. The student is walking quickly and very erratically. It looks like he is trying to get away from the principal without running.

2. The principal is clearly following him. I can't tell if he is saying anything. What is strange to me is that it seems like he is avoiding eye contact when he stretches his arm out to stop the kid.

3. He blocked the kids path but that doesn't give the kid the right to shove at him to try and get past.

4. The principal didn't initiate the force and he only used force to restrain and move the kid, there was no striking.

Based only on what is observable I would call it justified.

Not acceptable at all. I wonder if the chick who opens what I assume to be the office door was an employee and left because she considered the situation to be out of hand and wanted no part of it? Also the "restraint" continued after they were in the office which is again pretty excessive.

Snarky, you seem to be assuming that objectionable words were used that justify the Principal's action. I don't think words ever justify violence.

Words? Not really.

I said no one is talking about what lead up to it and therefore I have no idea what lead up to it. The principle is already following him before the video starts. I have no idea why. Its strangely absent from the story.

If I was going to guess my only clue would be the students quick jump to a physical response when he is being stopped. If he is that quick to get physical with an adult then it is entirely possible the principal had witnessed him doing something physical to another student prior to when the tape starts.

Why does he use the neck as a contact point for taking him down? If the kid tries to resist he will end up choking himself, it makes resisting difficult. Why does he know to use that contact point? He is a military reservist.

I think somewhere in the story it mentioned that allegedly the student had been using his cellphone to take inappropriate video of a girl without her consent and the principal was attempting to confiscate his phone.

The notion that words never justify violence is silly but that said, I don't think I'd qualify the encounter as violent.

How would you have dealt with the kid?

I think the standard power ranger's method is to let them escape to return to fight another day.

Ok, let's make some assumptions:

~There was interaction of some type prior to what we see in the video, even though neither side has stated such.
~ The Principal's version of events is truthful (the kid was taking inappropriate pictures of girls) rather than the kid's (he wanted to take pictures of a chickfight), even though there has been no evidence released to back either claim.

What action by the kid justified a takedown by the Principal? I'm not seeing one. And further, why continue to keep the kid in a 'restraining' hold after he had been successfully moved into the office? Why not simply block the door until the kid complied with whatever the Principal wanted or until the police were called if the Principal truly saw him taking inappropriate pictures?

It could be justified up to the point of continued restraint in the office if the purpose was removal of the kid from the larger crowd while at the same time controlling his access to the phone to preserve any pictures that it contained; but once those goals were accomplished there was no need for restraint.

The kid attempted to shove the principal out of his way. I say attempted because the principal is a large guy and the kid basically bounced off. You as a student can not shove a principal any more than you could shove another student, a police officer, your parents, or anyone. Shoving is assault.

When he did that he crossed the line from the principal trying to talk to him to the principal restraining him until law enforcement could arrive. Why should the principal have released him before law enforcement arrived to cuff him?

Because the kid was still resisting? Or should he have just released him once in the office with the assumption the kid would calm down and hand over the phone without it escalating further?

I'm not sure yet what I think, but I lean towards this being inappropriate behavior. My own attitude toward physical contact with my students is that I'm only willing to physically restrain a student if that student is a danger to other students in the immediate area. I do not think this is the case in this situation, and so I like to think that I would not have gone through the trouble shown on that video. I would have verbally tried to restrain him, and if he continued to try to get away I would have let him go, since having a cell phone is not generally a violent act. It would not have mattered; the student would have been suspended or even worse at that point. The student would not come back to school at all, at least in my district, until he or she was willing to sit in an office with me and eventually apologize for the obviously out of line behavior. Why restrain him at all? He didn't do anything that indicated harm to others, at least from what we can see in that video.

That said, after the decision was made to restrain him, taking him to the office as the principal did was the only thing left to do. Trying to handle it there in front of 100 other students would have been a recipe for disaster. He had to get the whole thing into the office as best as he could, as quickly as he could.

Seemed unnecessary to me, but like Snarky said it's hard to say what led up to it so I think you have to reserve at least a little judgement depending on the exact situation. I.E. was the student violent before that point?

One thing that raises an eyebrow for me is also what Snarky said - little to no communication apparent from the principal, no eye contact, etc. Did he yell stop? Did he communicate what he wanted out of the student, or did he go directly to physical contact? A little communication can go a long way.

I'd also question whether throwing him to the ground(which I'm guessing is what prompted the concussion?) was a proper physical response to a shove. It just seems like someone with proper military training would be able to subdue a person without dropping them to the ground like that. Further, was it even necessary at that point to subdue the kid? I suppose it could be argued that he was being violent and most people will probably agree once you're violent being subdued is a necessity, but again surely it might be possible to communicate that that kind of violence is unacceptable.

I will say that after he tossed the kid to the ground he was at least subduing the kid in the full nelson with minimal harm done to the kid. As noted, no striking etc which is good. Less worse than I've seen reported in the media for sure.

Still, all this over a few stupid pictures. You'd think a non-physical solution should be possible here.

It's slightly unrelated, but some teenagers have a very strong view that their cell phone is "private" and put up a huge amount of resistance to it being taken at school. The policy at my school has been in place for several years now, but we still occasionally have students in the hallway near the principal's office screaming for their phones, or refusing to give it, threatening to call the cops for theft, etc. It's interesting to me, and probably gives an idea to the amount of content on that student's phone that may not be appropriate. Generally unless there is good reason to otherwise, we don't even look at what is on their phones when we take them away!

It would probably be a liability to even know what was on most students phones. Teenagers are apparently into trading nude photos of themselves. If you know it's on there you have to report it and basically ruin some kids future by getting them labeled as a sex offender for possession of child pornography.

You are right that I would have to report it, but I doubt that a few nude photos of their peers would end up with the sex offender label for life. That's a state law situation though, and each state is different.

It happened in Georgia, sadly enough =/

I think kiddie porn is a federal thing. Also if its being traded on phones and over the internet there are more charges. Cross a state line while on vacation with your family and bring your phone with you that happens to contain a photograph of your 17 year old girlfriend's boobs? You are so fucked.

Nope. Kiddie porn is only federal if it's on the internet or it crosses state lines. Otherwise local jurisdictions will handle it (and handle it they do)

Fribur wrote:


I think that is a very good answer. Hindsight is 20-20, but this is the type of situation that a principle should be thinking of how he would handle it ahead of time.

The only reason I can think of that would justify that is if there was a strong certainty that the kid was going to hurt someone. A principal is not a cop and does not have the right to manhandle some kid, period. If they thought he had unauthorized nude pictures or something, I could almost see that as a justification... but even then I'm not sure.

Even then - to apply a choke hold and slam him to the ground was way over the top. If the kid was black and the principal was white, he woudl be burned at the stake.

Riots!