Experts discuss how to handle defiant high school students

Disturbing videos showing a school resource officer flipping a girl from her desk and tossing her across the floor this week raised tough questions.

Police officers are commonly brought into public schools nowadays to maintain safety and deter illegal behavior.

[...] the School Resource Officers' Association says school districts should first agree not to involve officers in classroom discipline.

The Richland County Sheriff's Department has a "memorandum of understanding" delineating when officers should be involved, but the district has declined to make it public, so it's not clear whether Senior Deputy Ben Fields was asked to cross a line at Spring Valley High School.

The girl broke a school rule by using her cellphone in class, but the teacher could have spoken to her quietly, even when she refused to surrender it, rather than delay the lesson for everyone else, said Geoff Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor and expert on police violence.

Even when the girl refused to leave her seat, Alpert wonders, Why didn't they call a school counselor?

The third one is, if she absolutely refused to get up and she's causing a problem and he wants to get her up, there are pressure points, grabbing her under her arm, wrist lock, there are a number of things that can be done, none of which include telling the student next to her to move so he can flip her desk over, slam her and toss her across the room.

Sheriff Lott believes society should re-evaluate the role of police in schools, because officers are there to enforce laws, and one of them criminalizes classroom misbehavior.