Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/10/school-police-officer-removed.html
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I’m sure everyone will remember this anecdote the next time people say all school staff should be armed.
32 Likes
So…LEO does their job properly and gets shit on for it?
He was nicer than me…citation? Nope…I’d have it towed.
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The moral to this story evades me.
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At many (most?) schools, there will be a reserved parking space for the principal. If there is one here and it was open, and the principal just chose to park where he did, then he should rightly get a ticket. If there is such a spot, but someone else had parked there, then that person should get a ticket. If there is no “principal” spot, then the principal should make a case for why he needs one to the school board; but the ticket stands.
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“Take the bus” ?
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Hard to believe that it seems OK whenever the person in charge feels that rules are for other people.
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Oh, you had to open that can of worms, didn’t you…
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The parking offense happened repeatedly, the officer gave a warning, and then a ticket was issued. This isn’t a matter of proper assignments - this is a matter of violating the space reserved for disabled parking.
There’s no justification for it. The principal can have moved when warned all he liked - but when he keeps doing it it moves into the realm of willful disobedience. Consequences!
Firing the officer, especially doing so immediately after receiving the ticket, is the most self-serving bullshit I can imagine.
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For a while in college I worked as an appeals officer for the school’s parking enforcement. I never granted a single appeal for persons who illegally parked in or obstructed a handicap spot. That is low behavior.
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Kinda agree except if someone parked in the Principal’s spot then the Principal should have double-parked to block the offender in instead of using a space reserved for people who might actually need it. Parking between those spaces could prevent at least two disabled people from being able to access their cars.
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Sounds like the officer was reassigned rather than fired, but still pretty ridiculous.
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I’m still wondering how the principal got a pass on committing a criminal offence and didn’t lose his job over it.
“ Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely …"
- Lord Acton
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When I was with a person that needed that space for a side-ramp van, I suddenly became much more sensitive to people parking there.
I asked our FedEx guy to stop parking in the hashed area. I told him it would be better to just take one of the actual spots reserved for the handicapped because when he parks in the center, he’s using up both spots from the perspective of somebody that needs that space for their ramp.
Didn’t work. All the delivery guys still park there, or worse, park behind those spots (blocking them) and just throw on the 4-way flashers.
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I don’t think police should be in schools. I think it has harmed more students than it has helped, and as we have recently seen, a single armed cop is useless in a truly dangerous situation. But if they are there, then they should have the right to enforce all of the laws, and if the principal can’t handle it, the principal should be removed, not the officer.
(I think officers harm students because they do not understand educational law and disability law and they tend to use physical force in ways that are not appropriate in school. The various cases of children with disabilities being hand-cuffed, arrested, and assaulted by SROs for example.)
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They sent two civilians to throw out a cop? That’s gotta be one calm and collected cop.
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This just came up, tragically, in my hometown. A cop assigned to monitor high school students boarding buses drove up on a sidewalk in a big police SUV. The officer struck and killed a 4-year-old girl, the daughter of a bus driver, who was standing on the sidewalk.
Lots of folks around here are sending thoughts-n-prayers to both the officer and the little girl’s family, even though if it had been a civilian driving on a sidewalk, you can bet they wouldn’t get Ts-n-Ps but rather a charge of negligent homicide.
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Because we haven’t reached a point where we feel it’s necessary to fire people for parking violations.
An officer gets fired because a principal isn’t a person of principle. Almost poetic.
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Retributively disciplining employees for doing their jobs properly by applying rules uniformly to everyone, however, does seem like it might warrant disciplinary action.
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