CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS WANT TO BAN TASERS IN TEXAS SCHOOLS

  

The ACLU, along with the  civil rights groups Disability Rights, Texans Care for Children, Texas Criminal Justice Coalitiion, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Texas are calling upon the Texas Education Agency to ban the use of tasers pepper spray by law enforcement officers in Texas schools.

Law enforcement representatives, including the Texas Municipal Association, have responded by suggesting the request is misguided naïve.

The groups sent a letter to Texas Commissioner of Education Michael Williams, asking the Agency, to take ‘affirmative steps and end the use of Tasers and pepper spray on students and ensure school police and appropriately working to keep the schools safe.’

This letters cites the recent case from Bastrop County where a sheriff’s deputy tased a 17-year old student in a high school hallway.  The deputy said the student was combative and would not comply with his orders.  His family says the student was only trying a break up a previous fight between other students.  The boy fell back from the force of the taser and  hit his head on the floor.  He was in a coma for 52 days.  His family filed a lawsuit and their lawyer suggested the officer  ‘should have just grabbed him’ instead of using a taser.

A similar to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.  That Commission responded by saying they did not have the authority to prohibit the use of tasers and pepper spray by individual school districts. 

The TEA has yet to respond to the letter.

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