Schools Review Excessive Force Claim

One of the largest school districts in Washington state has hired a retired army general to review allegations of racial discrimination and excessive force made by African American students who complained of being targeted by school security officers.

Brig. Gen. Julius F. Johnson will oversee a panel investigating whether security personnel treat black students differently and, in particular, whether putting handcuffs on misbehaving students constitutes excessive force.

The 27,000-student Kent School District is one of only a few in the state that lets its security officers use handcuffs. Most of Washington’s big school districts -- such as Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver and Bellevue -- don’t allow the practice.

Kent is a working-class town of 85,000 just south of Seattle. The district encompasses 40 schools and employs 20 security officers, all of whom have law enforcement or military backgrounds. Of the 20, 12 are white, five are African American, two are Latino and one is Asian.

There are no reliable numbers on handcuffing incidents, because the district considers their use a form of restraint rather than a use of force. Supt. Barbara Grohe said handcuffs had been used on only a “tiny fraction of 1%” of all the students.

According to estimates, security officers have used handcuffs between 33 and 44 times this academic year, including four instances involving elementary school students.

In one incident involving a young student, the boy was in such a violent state that his mother asked that the restraints be applied.

District spokeswoman Becky Hanks said security officers underwent annual training and used handcuffs only when all other attempts at defusing a confrontational situation didn’t work.

In general, district policy allows handcuffs to be used when a student becomes a threat to himself or herself or to others in the school.

“We plan to be very aggressive” in our investigation, said Johnson, who is African American. He spent 30 years in the Army and now works as an independent educational consultant. “We will be forthright, and we will be honest.”

The panel plans to come out with a report and a list of recommendations next month.

The 17,600-student Highline School District, east of Kent, also allows the use of metal restraints; it recorded 18 handcuffing incidents in the school year. And the nearby Federal Way School District, which has 22,000 students, has used handcuffs 21 times over the last three years; 11 of the cases involved black students. Late last month, Federal Way announced it would ban the use of handcuffs except to restrain a student armed with a weapon.

The Kent district has been embroiled in controversy since early March, when the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People announced the first of a series of legal claims. So far, the families of 12 black students have filed claims totaling $39.6 million -- or $3.3 million per student -- against the district.

Carl Mack, president of the Seattle NAACP, said the families of at least eight more students would file claims this week. The district has 60 days from the time of the first filing to respond, after which the families can proceed with lawsuits. Mack said he had requested that the national NAACP file the suits on the families’ behalf.

In announcing the claims, Mack made public the stories of black students who said they were unfairly targeted and roughed up by security officers.

One student, Shuvonyeh Veasley, now 15, said that after a hostile verbal exchange she had with another student, a female security officer told her -- and not the other student -- to go to the main office. Veasley said she refused. The officer twisted her arm, handcuffed her and physically forced her to the office.

Mack said the NAACP knew of at least 25 handcuffing cases in Kent schools, 22 of them involving African American students.

He relayed stories of security officers pulling hair and using pepper spray and submission holds often employed by police. He said the incidents showed a pattern of institutional racism against blacks, who make up about 10% of the Kent district’s student body.

Mack said he was “extremely disappointed” in the selection of Johnson to head the review panel. He said the retired general’s “military mind-set” would predispose him to favoring police tactics.

“This is a field of education,” Mack said. “This isn’t the military. This isn’t a penal institution. It seems that’s what [Supt. Grohe] thinks she’s running over there -- a penal institution.”

Responding to Mack’s comments, Johnson said: “People can say what they want.... I have no opinion on the matter of handcuffs.”