Nearly four years after George Floyd suffocated to death while being pinned face down to the pavement by a police officer, Minnesota Democrats are fast-tracking legislation that would undo a less-than-year-old ban prohibiting school-based cops from using that same type of restraint on students.

As early as Monday, the state’s House of Representatives is slated to consider a proposal that presents a drastic departure from provisions approved by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — rules that explicitly barred school resource officers from using face-down “prone restraint.”

The ban was part of a broader police reform movement that followed Floyd’s murder. The fatal physical hold led to the largest civil rights protest in U.S. history, a national reckoning on racism, policy reforms that sought to address police brutality and, in Minneapolis and dozens of districts nationwide, the removal of sworn officers from school campuses. In Minnesota, new state rules barred police officers from using chokeholds on people and prone restraints were banned in the state’s prisons.

Now, as the state’s Democrats make a 180-degree turn on the campus reform, education equity advocates have accused state leaders of falling to the political pressure of law enforcement groups ahead of a November election where party lawmakers seek to maintain their narrow majority in the state House. The proposal cleared the House Ways and Means committee earlier this week.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240304131847/https://www.the74million.org/article/minnesota-dems-push-to-repeal-school-ban-on-restraint-that-killed-george-floyd/

  • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    The other person provided the name, here is Bonnie Westland’s reasoning:

    During a recent Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee hearing, Democratic Sen. Bonnie Westlin, lead sponsor of the Senate version of the bill that would restore prone restraints in schools, presented it less as a backtrack and more as an opportunity. The issue is about ensuring campus cops remain “important team members in our schools,” Westlin said, while creating uniformity across school resource officers’ duties, their training requirements and accountability.

    What she’s referencing is the fact that police responded to the ban by removing 400 officers from schools. She wants cops back in schools for some reason, and she wants to give 150k tax dollars a year to police depts.

    Along with removing restraint rules for school-based police and campus security staff, the pending legislation would allocate $150,000 this year to develop consistent, statewide training standards for school resource officers and require police to complete the lessons before working on campuses. The bill also seeks to clarify that school-based police officers should not be involved in routine student discipline.

    Police won’t go to school if they can’t do that particular move, a deadly move that easily kills, on high school children. This ghoul is making the assumption we need or even want them there.

    Ladies and gentlemen, i present to you the “Harm reduction party”

    • nymwit@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Cedrick Frazier is in on it, too. For some reason he rates a picture while Bonnie Westlin doesn’t. Presumably because of the comparisons the article/general press is making with these laws/Floyd and that Frazier is black. Saying anything about him being black in the article would be crass, but they’ll just drop a picture and not have to write anything. “Ooooh look, he must be a hypocrite!” I mean he kinda sorta is maybe, but not because he’s black but because the article says he was a champion of police reform after Floyd’s murder and now is walking back a reform.

      The money is supposed to go to training. Seems reasonable enough. They have a “Captain of Investigations Tanya Harmoning” going on in there about how the cops only know how to do things one way. Seems like it could be good if they learned a different way. There is a little more detail, too: “But even without a ban on prone restraints, he said that state law would continue to prohibit school-based officers from pinning students to the ground in ways that restrict breathing.”

      • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        I despise that quote, because it is false on its face. The position they are unbanning is one that restricts breathing. I just saw a link on lemmy a few days ago about this very position and how dangerous it is.

        As far as the money for training goes, i hate that too. Its ostensibly to train cops not to kill kids while using the move that we’re now allowing them to do because they had a tantrum and quit when we told them they couldn’t.

        We don’t need cops in schools, period, and paying for the privilege of having them back? Has me straight fucking pissed.

        None of this ire is directed at you, mind you, youre great :D