Around 50 community members, Hamilton County students and their families gathered Monday evening to voice their concerns about the presence of police officers in schools following the arrest of a Black student at East Ridge High School on Sept. 20.
A video of the incident went viral last week, sparking student protests and questions from the Chattanooga NAACP. The footage shows a white school resource officer, Tyler McRae, attempting to restrain the student, Tauris Sledge, 18, on the bleachers by pulling his hair and pushing him to the ground. A nearby adult can be seen and heard saying, “Don’t resist!” The student responds, “Ya’ll see what he’s doing? I’m not resisting.”
The meeting was organized by several community groups and facilitated by former County Commissioner Katherlyn Geter at the Kingdom Center on East M.L. King Boulevard. Organizers did not allow the Chattanooga Times Free Press to cover the meeting itself but allowed interviews after the event.
Community member Monique Scott, a psychiatric nurse and clinical professor, said she attended the meeting because seeing the video made her sick.
“I couldn’t watch the whole video, it is too violent for me,” Scott said in an interview. “It’s too violent to see someone, a child in a school, being grabbed by the hair and not know what is happening.”
She said Hamilton County Schools needs more mental health resources.
“During the meeting, I shared that we need to come up with some resolutions and bring those resolutions to the board,” she said. “We need to focus on mental health. We need to focus on having the resources. The magic that happens when the proper crisis intervention happens, that needs to occur more in the schools so the kids can feel safe.”
Taylor Lyons, founder of students right advocacy group Moms for Social Justice, said students must be educated on their rights when it comes to interacting with school resource officers.
“What we were hearing over and over again is that there’s this real disconnect in what is happening in our schools with the SRO officers and how they’re relating to our kids — and what we as parents don’t know, what the kids don’t know,” Lyons said.
Two Hamilton County school board members also attended the forum, Karitsa Mosley Jones, D-Chattanooga, and Jill Black, D-Lookout Mountain.
"There are clearly a lot of concerns that parents, students and community members and leaders have about our processes and policies and procedures as it relates to our student safety officers and our (school) resource officers and the processes and roles that they play in our schools," Mosley Jones said in an interview. "And so I heard a lot of questions tonight, a lot of concerns, a lot of experiences that people had. And for me as a board member, I've gained insight into some things that I need to ask some questions about to ensure that I have a clear understanding of what those policies and procedures and processes are for our students and families."
In June, the district announced a near $1 million investment to put school security officers in every building. The Hamilton County Commission also put an additional $1 million toward the effort.
In August, the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office transferred roughly $600,000 in excess funds for the district to hire eight more officers.
Unlike school resource officers, security officers are not active law enforcement and they cannot make arrests. They can, however, carry a weapon, detain and use lethal force if necessary.
"I was so glad to have students here to speak out," Black said in an interview. "I heard a lot of stories from students and families and their experiences in the school system interacting with law enforcement SROs in our schools. And those are important lessons to learn. Not everybody has the same experience. Not everybody has the same reaction to law enforcement in our schools and SROs in our schools, and it's important for us to consider everyone in the community."
Lyons said this is just the first of more meetings to come.
"There was a really good idea that came in all of the conversations that we should have community dialogues like this in different parts of the city in different districts," Lyons said. "There's a real benefit to us hearing about the lived experiences from people who live in different neighborhoods than we do, speak different languages than we do."
Lyons said that once more forums are held, attendees expressed they'd like to go before the Board of Education.
"What was clearly demonstrated in tonight's conversation, is this a systemic pattern," Lyons said. "So, hopefully, this egregious incident will be the catalyst to a community conversation between the district and the parents and the students that very desperately needs to happen."
Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @carmen_nesbitt.