Security Guards on Camera

By Ciara Smith

I read about a young man that attends Fremont high school who was physically abused by two security officers. It was caught on tape. There was only little punishment done to the officers, which was that they were suspended, compared to their out of control behavior. The tape was hidden for a year and then revealed in March 2015 after BOP brought it to the attention of the new police chief. It didn’t make any sense to me. The officers provoked and proceeded to harm the young man for no reason. The young man tried to defend himself and was hit and choked several times by the officers.

I think it was a horrible crime to commit on a child. It was just criminal on the officers’ part. He unnecessarily beat the child and did not get into a lot of trouble over it. I wonder what was going through the officer’s head. Why wasn’t this reported sooner? The complaint policy was created, thanks to BOP, so why is it not being utilized. Where do their priorities lie? It couldn’t be that much work for them to do considering the fact that we do have School Security Officers that are supposed to be helping control the kids. Because the officers aren’t effectively doing their jobs this happened to this young man, I wonder how many other people this has happened to especially before the complaint policy was implemented.

People tried to justify the officer’s behavior by saying things like, “The video didn’t tell the whole story” or “No matter what he shouldn’t have put his hands on the officer.” So was it ok for the officer to put his hands on the teen? We clearly saw the officer hit the teen and immediately put him into a chokehold. Was that ok? Even if there was more to the video of the boy what could there be? The boy might have said something to the officers but that’s no excuse. Well maybe he hit them first before what the video showed. And… they stopped and didn’t touch him for a minute so that was over with. In any case they could have handled it differently. I wonder how many more times this same thing has happened?