Handcuffs, force used on students in Kent schools

By J. Patrick Coolican
Seattle Times staff reporter

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The use of such tactics is far less common in some Washington districts of comparable or greater size. Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver and Bellevue don't use handcuffs at all, and Highline and Federal Way employ them rarely.

"It's just not necessary," said Bob Guile, director of risk management for the Tacoma School District, said of handcuffs.

Kent school officials defend the use of handcuffs as a necessary security measure.

"The reason we use handcuffs is to restrain, to keep people from continuing to do things that will be a threat to themselves or others," said security director Gary Cooper.

The use of force by Kent security officers, especially in incidents involving students of color, is under scrutiny because of legal claims filed this month on behalf of nine African-American students.

The claims, filed by the Seattle NAACP, charge that the district has targeted black children with overly aggressive discipline, and seek $30 million in damages. The district has 60 days to respond to the claims; after that, the families can file lawsuits.

School records obtained through a public-records request show that in addition to handcuffing students, Kent school-security officers, who are district employees and not police officers, have used physical force on students at least 22 times since school started in September.

Thirteen of those incidents — about 60 percent — have involved African-American or Asian students. Those groups make up a quarter of the student body.

Independent probe planned

District Superintendent Barbara Grohe plans this week to appoint an independent investigator to examine the allegations.
 
"The one thing I'm certain of is that our staff, whether they're security officers, administrators or teachers, take absolutely seriously providing a learning environment that is safe and supportive for every child," Grohe said.

The district records reveal situations in which security officers — armed with pepper spray and handcuffs — have used police tactics to restrain insubordinate and sometimes violent students before handcuffing them.

The Kent School District, the fourth-largest in the state with more than 26,000 students, is not alone in its use of security officers or defensive techniques. Its use of handcuffs is unusual, however.

At Kent's 11 middle and high schools, district security officers have used handcuffs 33 to 44 times since September — about three or four times per school — Cooper estimated. The district doesn't have exact numbers because handcuffing doesn't necessarily constitute a "use of force" and thus isn't reported, he said.

Security officers in the nearly 18,000-student Highline School District carry handcuffs but have used them no more than five times this school year, said spokeswoman Catherine Carbone Rogers.

In the Federal Way School District, which has 22,449 students, security officers have used handcuffs five times this year.

Kent has 20 security officers. Seven have prior law-enforcement experience, and the rest served in the military or worked in private security. Of the 20, five are African American and six are women, Cooper said.

They spend 10 days a year in training on cultural diversity, "defensive tactics," "de-escalation techniques," and the use of pepper spray and handcuffs, among other things.

"We look for people who have an interest in children and have the skills to do what we think is needed," Cooper said.

Shuvonyeh Veasley, whose family filed a claim, said in a recent interview she was unfairly roughed up by security officers at Meeker Junior High in September.

Veasley, now 15, said the incident happened after some students called her a racial slur, and she replied with one of her own. She alone was asked to go to the office, she said. When she refused, the female security officer "said 'Well, then, we're gonna have to do this the hard way.' She twisted my right arm, handcuffed me and pushed me into the office."

Veasley said she was sitting down waiting when she heard a voice she thought was her mother's and stood up. The security officer told her to sit down.

"She dug her nails in me and took me to the floor. She said, 'Watch your chin or you'll get a rug burn,' " said Veasley, who cried as she told the story. "She put her weight on me and handcuffed me again."

Grohe wouldn't comment on specific allegations but said the district's diversity creates a special challenge. "If you look around the world, when you have people from different points of view and different cultures coming together, there are differences of opinion."

The Kent district's records, which are written by the security officers, detail situations that escalated when students — white, black and Asian — didn't obey commands.

The physical confrontations sometimes followed students fighting one another or being combative with teachers, though other times they stemmed from more minor incidents, such as one senior's refusal to give up a CD player.

The security officers used such tactics as a "goose-neck counter-joint technique," which Cooper described as elevating the forearm to a 45-degree angle and compressing the wrist toward the elbow to put pressure on it.

Police techniques

They used other "counter-joint" techniques and the "palm-forward technique," all used by police officers to induce "pain compliance" — meaning the subject's pain causes him or her to relent.

In November, David Fowler, a black security officer at Kentridge High School, asked a white student to remove his hood.

The student refused, threatened the officer and "tried to push me. I grabbed the student and wrestled with him in the hallway," Fowler wrote in his report. When the student tried to punch Fowler, he "wrestled the student out of the building and was able to take the student down to the ground."

When the student continued to swing and miss, the security officer hit him in the face. "I struck the student in the face with my fist a couple of times to try to stop his attack."

The student, who was on probation at the time for an earlier criminal offense, was eventually restrained and placed in handcuffs. A King County sheriff's deputy was called and arrested the student for violating his probation.

The security officer had abrasions on the knuckles of his right hand from the scuffle. The report doesn't note any injuries suffered by the student.

Different record keeping

Other districts don't compile disciplinary and security records the same way Kent does. But many districts said they have a completely different philosophy on the use of force and handcuffs.

Tacoma, for example, teaches a nationally known de-escalation method that uses physical force as a last resort and is designed not to harm the student.

Security officers in Vancouver, another large, racially diverse district, avoid physical confrontations altogether.

"Whether (a student) walks away and doesn't cooperate, we're not going to grab them," said Greg Watt, director of security, "because we're going to be endangering our security monitors and the kids, and that's not how we're handling those situations."

Seattle Times staff reporters Leslie Fulbright, Sanjay Bhatt and Linda Shaw contributed to this report. J. Patrick Coolican: 206-464-3315 or jcoolican@seattletimes.com

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