Milwaukee Public Schools: Handcuffs for Violent Students

The Milwaukee Public Schools deserve the proper tools to create a safe learning environment for students, faculty, and staff.

Uncontrolled violence at the hands of physically abusive students cannot be tolerated.

One of the tools that an MPS panel wants to utilize in order to regain and maintain control in the schools is handcuffs.

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

After hours of emotional debate, a Milwaukee School Board panel approved a measure Tuesday night that would allow safety aides to use flexible handcuffs to restrain students who demonstrate threatening behavior.

"We've been in situations where we've had to restrain students for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour," said Shawn Buford, a safety aide at Custer High School. Buford said he has been out of school three times this school year after being assaulted by students.

But Raphiel Cole called use of handcuffs "a form of pre-institution that you are doing for our kids."

Cole, who has nieces and nephews in Milwaukee Public Schools, added: "Anything but these handcuffs. You are going to have holding cells for the children, what's next?"

The speakers were deeply divided on the issue.

Unfortunately, the question isn't what the schools are doing TO the kids; it's what the kids are doing to each other and faculty.

Handcuffs brings to mind the silver, metal handcuffs dangling from police officers' belts.

These are different. True, they would be used to restrain, but they're flexible.

That comment about "holding cells for the children" is sort of goofy.

At home, when a child is sent to his room as punishment, that could be considered a holding cell.

A timeout chair in a classroom is also a holding cell of sorts.

Using the jail imagery is merely an emotional ploy.

Several safety aides and school administrators testified that the flexible handcuffs are increasingly necessary in rare cases to protect school staff and the students themselves.

But several parents and community activists argued that using handcuffs in school will send a message to children that they "are coming to jail."

Perhaps the message to children will be that becoming physically violent will not be tolerated at school.

If that's the kids' idea of jail, then the message should be that they "are coming to jail."

I think it's far more destructive to send the message that rules won't be enforced and that the authority figures really don't have authority over the students.

It's important to remember that students would never be handcuffed for coming to school. Such measures would be taken only if students are so violent that they can't be controlled any other way.

Then, it becomes a safety issue for the other students and faculty. The handcuffs aren't for punishment. They're for protection.

The move is one of several steps the district is taking in the wake of a series of high-profile assaults and fights in the city's schools this year. A couple of months ago, for instance, two pairs of police officers began to work full-time in the schools and the school district hired special teams to respond to a "mental health crisis" in the schools. In one incident this school year, a 15-year-old student attacked her principal. In another, a high school student sexually assaulted his teacher in front of the class.

The handcuff policy won't be employed routinely or for minor offenses.

It's a last resort for extreme cases.

Although the panel approved the measure on a 3-1 vote, it must still pass the full board at a meeting Thursday night. If it does, the hand
cuffs would be available on a trial basis this spring in a few schools, according to Superintendent William Andrekopoulos.

Safety aides would be required to have training from the Milwaukee Police Department before they used the handcuffs, which administrators say would only be used in the most "extreme cases."

Board members also were divided on the issue. Jeff Spence, Danny Goldberg and Ken Johnson voted for the measure, but Charlene Hardin was adamantly opposed, arguing that such measures could start a form of "slavery all over again."

However, board member Joe Dannecker responded that the move is "about dealing with thrashers."

He said if one of his school-age daughters were to act out violently: "I would much rather have her restrained with flex cuffs . . . than have a 300-pound safety guy sit on her."

Dannecker is right. He makes a lot of sense. He'll be missed.

While I think there are valid arguments against the policy, Hardin is using inflammatory rhetoric rather than reason.

"Slavery all over again" is Al Sharptonesque over the top.

A violent student in danger of getting hurt or hurting someone else is not a slave.

In a proposal sent to the board, administrators noted that in the past safety aides sometimes have had to hold students by force, which can raise risks of "positional asphyxia," in which breathing is cut off.

That's a convincing argument for trying the handcuffs as a means to control violent kids.

Several school staff members who testified in favor of the handcuffs said they would not have supported the measure even a few years ago.

"This is a sad statement about the level of violence in our schools," said Myron Cain, the principal of Hamilton High School. He added: "There are situations every day when safety aides will have to literally wrestle a student to the ground."

A sad statement, indeed.

It's horrible that some Milwaukee public schools have degenerated into chaotic, violent dens.

Students needing to be wrestled to the ground on a daily basis is a serious problem. It's completely unacceptable.

It's shocking.

Actually, what's really shocking is that there are board members unwilling to take measures to control the level of violence in the schools.

Drastic action needs to be taken.

Isn't it obvious that violence in the schools spills out into the community?

Is it worse for an MPS safety aide to put flexible handcuffs on a kid?

Or, is it worse for a cop to put very unflexible cuffs on a kid on his or her way to a jail cell?

Isn't it obvious?