"What I will say is the experience that this young man had yesterday is something that is becoming more prevalent than not with individuals who look like him."
Hamilton County Board of Education member Karitsa Mosley Jones uttered the above statement to this newspaper Wednesday concerning an incident at East Ridge High School in which a white school resource officer (SRO) was summoned to assist with a situation in which a Black student was described as being aggressive to a coach.
The officer, according to video footage, attempted to restrain the student by pulling his hair and pushing him to the ground. However, the out-of-context footage posted on the Facebook page of the Chattanooga NAACP is only a small segment of what is said to be more than an hour of total footage of the incident.
We won't speculate about the officer's actions because we weren't there, we don't know what the student did or didn't do when asked to comply, and we haven't seen the video.
However, we are shocked that a school board member would make such a judgment without knowing all the facts and, more than that, would intimate with her statement that more than half of all interactions between a white resource officer and a Black student go south.
Let that sink in.
Jones is alleging that the majority -- "more prevalent than not" -- of times in which an SRO and a Black student come in contact, there is a negative outcome.
Statements like hers are how racist charges begin to surround full groups of people who in no way deserve them.
Let's not forget that only weeks ago Hamilton County commissioners were trying to figure out a way -- at the behest of fearful parents, school board members and the community -- to put more officers in the public schools to keep their children safe.
Then-Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond said he couldn't fill the openings he had (is there any wonder when you're open to such charges?), so commissioners decided to expend funds to hire school safety officers for all the schools that didn't have them.
Again, we don't know whether the officer at East Ridge acted properly or not, but we do believe no officer will want to take such a position if every action they take to do what they are asked to do is scrutinized, criticized and they are all but called racists. Further, we believe Hamilton County commissioners will be reluctant to assign funds for such officers if they believe they will be held up to scorn for attempting to do their job.
As it happened, officers had to get involved in incidents earlier this week on property adjacent to two other majority minority schools.
In the first incident at The Howard School, several students were congregating just off-campus during school hours, and Chattanooga police were called. While getting ready to transport the students to school, a gun was found in the backpack of one of the students and was confiscated. The student was arrested.
According to police, the gun had never been brought onto school grounds.
In the second incident, just off the campus of Brainerd High School, a school resource officer was called during school hours to the adjacent Brainerd Recreation Center to break up a fight. When the SRO reached the scene, the fight had broken up and he sought to talk to a suspect allegedly involved. As they began to talk, according to police reports, the suspect began to push past him, then strike him several times in the face. After a struggle, the SRO eventually subdued the suspect, who was to receive juvenile warrants for assault and disorderly conduct.
Police said video showed the officer acted within policy.
School resource officers and now school safety officers are likely involved in scores of encounters every day that don't make the news. We believe a great majority of those encounters are pleasant. Perhaps a question is answered, a joke told, or some playful banter exchanged.
In others, fights are broken up, students pulled apart and order is restored to situations that threaten to get out of hand.
With all too many guns prevalent among students who shouldn't have them, with students' increasing lack of respect for authority and with so many students exhibiting a lack of proper learned behavior, SROs are walking a tightrope every time they enter a school.
The least they should be afforded in situations where a fight ensues is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. That's what will be afforded the student in the East Ridge situation if he is charged with disorderly conduct, and that is what the officer will have with the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office until a review is completed.
Meanwhile, until all the facts are in, community leaders in whom voters have put trust should refrain from exacerbating circumstances and especially from making racially inappropriate statements.