Bullying Victim Shot
Sometimes, those being bullied take matters into their own hands. However, it’s an oddity to see the bullying victim being shot by an officer at his school.
That’s exactly what happened last week at a Reno, Nevada high school, where a knife-carrying 14-year old, facing severe distress after being assaulted by several seniors at the school, was shot by an officer, who was placed on administrative leave.
While it’s hard to point fingers when not being involved in the issue at hand, several factors must be weighed into consideration here.
First off, you have to wonder why a trained officer didn’t attempt to calm the boy down without using excessive force (unless he had no choice). Second, what kind of school administration praises the actions of an officer who shot a 14-year old who was a bullying victim (unless there are two sides to this story)?
You can read the article below and judge for yourselves, but one thing is for sure—there needs to be a better process involved at a very young age in regards to how bullying is handled in schools.
Reno School Cop Shoots Teen Victim of Bullying in the Chest—District Praises Cop for ‘Protecting Children’
Teen’s attorney speaks out while school district praises cop for shooting.
A school police officer at Hug High School in Reno, Nev., shot a 14-year-old boy who had a knife on him as the boy was trying to escape a crowd that had formed to see an anticipated beat-down of the boy, the teen’s family’s lawyer, David Houston, told the AP. The attorney described the boy as emotionally distressed and said he had already been hit when he was trying to escape. He was shot in the chest by an officer who has not been identified but who has been placed on paid administrative leave.
“Those kids were alerted there was going to be a beat-down at a specific time and a specific location. They had amassed with their cellphones for the purpose of filming it,” Houston said. “Half the student body is out there cheering them on. He’d been punched in the face and was running around screaming, ‘Get away from me!’ He was trying to extricate himself from a situation that had become like spectators in the Roman Colosseum.”
“There was no attempt to calm the situation,” the attorney also said. “There was not this genuine sense of panic or alarm by the students watching until the officer attempted to execute the 14-year-old who was screaming, ‘Get away from me.”
“Protecting children,” in this instance, sounds like it meant putting a slug in the chest of a 14-year-old bullying victim. While the school district can be argued to be sensationalizing the case by crediting the judgment of an adult who shot a 14-year-old in the chest with protecting other children from “deadly force,” neither has the school district provided any kind of alternate account to the event, nor disputed any specific claim by the teen’s attorney as of yet. It should not be surprising the school district has stepped up to defend the cop so quickly—not only does he appear to have failed in protecting students, but for a school to get into such a situation in the first place seems to require years of poor school and district administration. Schools don’t lose control of their student bodies overnight, it takes a serious amount of mismanagement.
Disclaimer: You can read the rest of the article by clicking on the link provided at the end of this paragraph. However, the link includes video of the 14-year old bullying victim getting shot by the officer. It is not advised to show this to young children.
You can read the rest of the article here.