This is creating controversy, in the latest round of the "aggressive white police officer versus unruly black citizen" social media battle.



At first glance, this seems outrageous. A police officer just picking up a girl out of her desk and slamming her to the ground? What could possibly justify this?

But the explanation starts to make a hell of a lot more sense, and upon thinking about it, I mostly side with the officer.

Apparently this girl was disrupting the class and the teacher told her to leave the class. We have all seen this happen before. In fact, some of us have been the ones told to leave class.

But what I've never seen before is the student REFUSING to leave. So what happens at that point? If an unruly student basically says, "Fuck you, I'm staying right here", then SOMEONE needs to physically move her.

When I was in school in the '70s and '80s, this would have been done by a school employee, such as the assistant principal or campus supervisor. If you sat there like an asshole and wouldn't budge, an adult would have come over, grabbed your ass out of the desk, dragged you out, and that would have been that.

However, this was actually taken one legal step further by assigning the task to a police officer -- someone authorized by the law to use necessary force to physically move people who are refusing to move from a place they are not allowed to be.

So the girl disrupted class, was asked to leave, wouldn't leave, and the cops were called. The cop asked her to leave, and she still wouldn't go.

So what should the guy have done at that point? Nicely requested it 100 more times?

The only real question here is if the officer used too much force. Should he have just pulled her out of the desk, rather than lifting her up and slamming her to the ground? Probably. But I don't have any sympathy for someone who creates a disruption, refuses to leave, and then bitches about the manner that they are handled when physically removed by the cops. You've basically created your own problem.

Unfortunately the media is having a field day with this, and is engaging in the usual white-versus-black and anti-police rhetoric.