Schools Have Rules: Tuck Your Shirt In, Or Else Edition

Following the tragic Sandy Hook shooting, one of the pre-eminent recommendations for student safety was the placement of police in every school.  Of course, many schools have had the experience of an officer patrolling hallways for years, offering some insight on what might happen if a police officer is assigned to work a school, spending his days roaming the hallways with no shooter in sight, day after day, with nothing to do. 

After all, the likelihood of an armed marauder entering a school is infinitesimal, while the police officer can get a bit bored and seek out some activity to occupy his trained, armed time.  What could go wrong?



At the Academy for Learning, a Dolton, Illinois school for special needs students, 15-year-old Marshawn Pitts walked down the hallway with his shirt tail untucked.  This was against the rules. Oh boy.

This video from 2009 presents a concern that ought to be considered, that keeping a cop cooped up in a school leaves a lot of pent up manly energy without an appropriate outlet. Enter special needs students, young children, your child, and a police officer in an environment that is replete with rules.  It's a toxic mix.

Pitts was a learning disabled student in a school that, by definition, existed to provide an educational environment appropriate for him.  LD students occasionally have behavioral issues, having difficulty understanding rules or complying with them.  Whether dress codes, including things like keeping one's shirt tucked in, are of such a serious nature as to mandate strict enforcement is a matter of personal sensibility, but the school had a rule.  Schools are allowed to have rules. Fair enough.

But is the rule worthy of such harsh enforcement as this?

A video, released to Pitts' parents by the school several weeks after the incident, showed Pitts talking to the officer and a faculty member grabbing Pitts' arm. Pitts pulls away and walks down the hall, with the officer and faculty member close behind. But the officer then slams him against the lockers and pins him on the floor -- breaking his nose, according to Manzke.

The obvious answer is that the officer, Christopher Lloyd, didn't take the kid down for having his shirt tails out, but for disobeying his command. A simple case of contempt of cop.  But that leads to a larger issue and potentially more pervasive problem.  Kids don't always jump when and as high as police command, such that the potential for contempt of cop is huge in an environment where there are limited opportunities for the police officer to obtain the validation of his authority he needs, and limited opportunities to use force and "blow off steam." 

With the limited exception of some miscreant teachers or administrators, that means the most likely candidate for a police officer's use of force in a school will be students.

But the kid asked for it, disobeying the rules and failing to follow Lloyd's command?  Yes, a violation of rules may justify some sort of punitive measure, but that doesn't translate into a beating and takedown.  A lecture by the principal, maybe?  Write 100 times that I will tuck in my shirt tails? Detention for a day?  Sure, all appropriate means of assuring compliance with the rules.  Broken nose and potential for death by chest compression?  Hardly.

Of course, just because Pitts suffered a broken nose as a result of Lloyd's violent takedown, it's not like the police officer emerged unscathed.

The officer was taken to a hospital and treated for an eye scratch, Manzke said. But, he said, the officer was never charged with anything and an explanation for the incident was never provided.

Note that the student, whose injury was serious, was taken to the school nurse, then the police department.  The officer, on the other hand, went to the hospital, because there is no care too skilled for an injury on the job, no matter how trivial.

And did the school, dedicated to serving the needs of learning disabled students, recognize the severity of the problem that happened in its own halls?

But, the school said, "Unfortunately, the physical restraint of a student sometimes becomes necessary. In such instances, AFL and its staff are committed to employing techniques that are safe, effective and which conform to best practice standards.

First, it's untucked shirt tails. Next, it's murderous shooters.  We can't let that happen. Untucked shirt tails, the gateway to terror.  Before you invite the police to wander the hallways of your child's school, for his own protection, bear in mind that the cop will be there, bored to death, day after day, with little opportunity to release his energy.  Except on your kid.  Is the one in a million chance that your child's school will be the next one under siege worth putting an armed, bored potentially violent person in the hallway? 

Be careful that the solution doesn't present a greater likelihood of harm than the disease.

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