Pittsburgh, PA — A student on a bus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania caught a cop on video angrily berating a kid for smiling. The incident highlights the modern reality in public schools where blue-clad soldiers of law with badges and guns are a normal, everyday presence.In the video, uploaded to Facebook, an unidentified police officer stalks down the aisle of the bus, directing his rage at a student in the back who performed the outrageous act of smiling.
“You think you’re funny…you think you’re funny.”
As he reaches the student, the cop leans over the boy and says, “Smile in my face one more time, I’m gonna drag your ass off this bus and back to that fucking police car.”
The student is not in view of the camera, but can be heard saying, “Alright, alright.”
“Don’t smile one more time!” the cop says as he leaves the bus.
From the comments it appears that some kids were throwing stuff on the bus. Perhaps the bus driver was having a hard time settling them, or maybe the cop was having a bad day and decided to take it out on the kids.
Surely there are better ways to encourage kids to behave, but cops are not trained in interacting with children. They are trained in violence and wielding authority.
As we have pointed out at The Free Thought Project, police presence in public schools has grown around the country. In California alone, schools call the cops every 2.6 seconds.
Last year, we reported on a disturbing video of a cop bicep-cuffing a small boy to a chair, causing him to cry out in pain for several minutes. Sadly, it was a rare glimpse into the fact that restraint and seclusion are used tens of thousands of times every year in U.S. schools.
In another video, a cop can be seen punching and kicking a student. The overly aggressive nature that too many cops possess is especially dangerous when authority from the state is added. Many public school administrators readily accept law enforcement roaming the classrooms and buses.
This video highlights the negative energy that is brought into places where learning is supposed to be the goal.
