10th grader refused to relinquish her private property
A Houston, Texas, teen has decided to leave her current high school after school police responded aggressively to her defiant use of a cell phone.
Campus police were summoned to the Sam Houston High School on Tuesday to deal with 10th grade student Ixel Perez.
When the 70-pound student refused to relinquish her phone, three officers reportedly wrestled her to the floor, as another officer pinned her head to the ground with his knee.
Footage of part of the altercation, first obtained by KHOU.com, was captured by another student on a cell phone, and shows police manhandling Perez on a hallway floor as she screams.
It all started when Perez’s teacher caught her errantly using a cell phone in class.
The teen was ordered out to the hallway where the school’s assistant principal tried to confiscate her personal property.
“I just didn’t want to give up my phone,” Perez explained to KHOU, adding that she had been on the phone with her ill mother, trying to get a status update on her condition.
“She asked me for the phone and I didn’t want to give it to her, because I was scared. I ended up walking down the stairs trying to get away from the AP (assistant principal) and then she had already called the cops,” described Perez.
Cops arrived intent on forcing Perez to surrender her rights phone.
The student who filmed the incident described what he saw to the local news outlet.
“Both of the cops just tackled her down to the floor. They put her knee on her head and after that they just arrested her, took her phone,” Perez’s peer Gustavo Lucio told KHOU. “The cop just said you can’t use your phone and after that, no words no nothing, just actions, grabbed her, threw her down.”
“He grabbed my hand,” Perez said, “one of them was right here, one grabbed my hand, I didn’t want to let go of my phone because I was on the phone with mom.”
Perez’s brother was floored by the police response, and couldn’t figure out why it took three cops to detain his little sister.
“We all know it was wrong,” he stated. “It doesn’t take three cops to take down one teenage girl, especially a 70-pound teenage girl!”
Friends and family of Perez held a demonstration in front of the school yesterday demanding officials conduct an investigation into the officer’s use of force.
Despite footage obviously showing a combative police response, HISD released a statement claiming their students’ safety was their “absolute top priority,” and that they’ll investigate what led the school cops to respond in that manner.
“The safety of our students at Sam Houston High School and of all our schools is always our absolute top priority. The HISD police department and the school’s administration are continuing their investigations of what led to the detainment of a female student yesterday. “
The cops’ over-the-top reaction is indicative of the overzealous enforcement of arbitrary zero tolerance school policies, which do more to indoctrinate students into becoming obedient, unquestioning members of society who will bend to the will of authorities at a moment’s notice.
Most recently we’ve seen schools attempt to police students’ thoughts, as was the case last month when aSouth Carolina teen was suspended and arrested after imagining a story in which he used a gun to shoot a dinosaur.
“A 65 million year gap between the story and reality didn’t seem to matter to teachers who immediately suspended Stone for a week, searched his bookbag and locker – finding nothing – and then inexplicably called the police,” Steve Watson wrote.
Indeed, the Houston ISD police officers’ overreaction is something that would not seem out of place in authoritarian regimes such as North Korea.
“As problematic as all of these programs are, however, what’s really unnerving are the similarities between the American system of public education and that of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany, with their overt campaigns of educational indoctrination,” writes Rutherford Institute president John W. Whitehead on “The Death of Freedom in Our Schools.” “And while those who run America’s schools may not be deliberately attempting to raise up a generation of Hitler Youth, they are teaching young people to march in lockstep with the all-powerful government—which may be just as dangerous in the end.”
Everybody please read “The Authoritarians” by Robert Altemeyer
Simple solution to crap like this – shut down the Gunverment Indoctrination Centers, aka public schools.
That would help.
Which is exactly why it won’t ever happen… not as things are currently constituted.
The ugly truth is becoming clearer and clearer.
The costumed goons of the state acted as they did not out of concern for “public safety.” Whom could a young girl hurt with cell phone? Not for “public order.” The girl was merely standing in the hallway, not in the middle of a crowd inciting a riot. No. They acted as they did, out of a sadistic compulsion to crush anyone who dared defy the will of the Leviathan State.
American Exceptionalism, sad to say, was a myth. Americans, sad to say, are not exceptional. American society, sad to say, is not immune to the scourge of totalitarianism.
It can happen here. We know that, because it already has.
@Bevin –
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
Second President of the United States of America
Dear Gary,
Without endorsing Adam unconditionally, there is much implied truth in his observation.
The Daoist philosophers of ancient China felt that order was a consequence not of public authority, but of private conscience.
Lao-tzu came to this incisive conclusion: “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…. The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”
The wisest course, then, is to keep the government simple and for it to take no action, for then the world “stabilizes itself.” As Lao-tzu put it, “Therefore the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves….”
Murray Rothbard on Laozi.
I remain genuinely surprised that stuff like that doesn’t cause a father or brother somewhere to do something horrific to these people more often. I’m not supporting or advocating violence, to be clear. Just expressing surprise that they don’t screw with the wrong person more often than they seem to.
It’s not surprising the general apathy toward our eroding liberties by the populous as a whole. But these specific events, I don’t know… I just don’t see how these people get away with this as often as they do, especially when they are dealing with people in poverty who may feel they just don’t have much left to lose.