From Change.org, we learn the following:
Birmingham’s school district and police chief are being sued for a different injustice: pepper spraying defenseless children as a common practice to enforce discipline. How sad that in the city forever connected to Dr. King’s leadership, this new lawsuit documents systematic civil rights abuses happening to a new generation.
The lawsuit (PDF) filed this week by the Southern Poverty Law Center includes damning claims from multiple teenage students who say they were Maced or pepper sprayed for offenses as minor as observing a fight, talking back to an authority figure or smoking a cigarette.
“These children are not alleged to have engaged in any wrongdoing but are merely in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a statement. “These children are accused of engaging in normal but non-dangerous adolescent misbehavior – after which the adults taunt and celebrate their punishment.”
The text of the lawsuit includes some truly chilling examples like B.J., a teen accused of mumbling a profanity to a substitute. B.J. maintains his innocence and says another student spoke the profanity.
After the substitute teacher sent B.J. outside, an assistant principal began patting him down and going through his pockets. B.J., struggling to be free, tripped and fell to the ground, and two assistant principals watched as a police officer blasted pepper spray directly into B.J.’s face and eyes. B.J. felt as if he was blind and choking. The officer shoved him fully onto the ground with her knee and handcuffed him. One of the assistant principals is accused of saying, “Woo! That’s the first macing of the year!” B.J. was taken to a hospital where he was asked to sign a medical release waiver, even though he couldn’t see.
Another student, T.A.P., was accused of smoking cigarettes. T.A.P. explained that she smoked before school started, off of school grounds. After she was told to go home, she was grabbed by officers and eventually pinned by five grown men. One of them sprayed her in the face with pepper spray. She felt like choking and the skin around her eyes was damaged and peeling for a week after she was sprayed. She was taken to the hospital as well and asked to sign a medical release waiver.
Because mace is used so often in schools, the lawsuit says, students face daily safety risks. But their only options are transferring to other school systems, which isn’t permitted by zoning, enrolling in private schools, which they can’t afford, or dropping out of school, which violate students’ rights to an “equal and adequate” education under state law, the lawsuit reads.
