Where are Black Children Safe?, by Roxane Gay

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Where are Black Children Safe?
by Roxane Gay
OCTOBER 29, 2015

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Leon Lott, the sheriff of Richland County in Columbia, S.C., suspended the officer who forcibly removed a student from her desk at Spring Valley High School.
ALEX SANZ / ASSOCIATED PRESS

BLACK children are not allowed to be children. They are not allowed to be safe, not at home, not at pool parties, not driving or sitting in cars listening to music, not walking down the street, not in school. For black children, for black people, to exist is to be endangered. Our bodies receive no sanctity or safe harbor.

We can never forget this truth. We are never allowed to forget this truth.

On Monday, in Columbia, S.C., Ben Fields, a sheriff’s deputy assigned to Spring Valley High School, was called to a classroom to exert control over an allegedly disobedient student — a black girl. She wouldn’t give up her cellphone to her teacher, an infraction wholly disproportionate to what came to pass. There are at least three videos of the incident. When Mr. Fields approaches the girl, she is sitting quietly. He quickly muscles her out of her seat and throws her across the room.

The video of this brutality is unbearable in its violence, in what it reminds us, once again, about the value of black life in America, and about the challenges black children, in particular, face.

Schools are not merely sites of education, they are sites of control. In fact, they are sites of control well before they are sites of education. And for certain populations — students of color, working-class students, anyone on the margins — the sites of control in the school system can be incredibly restrictive, suffocating, perilous.

Statistics from a recent study showed that in South Carolina, black students made up 36 percent of the population and accounted for 60 percent of suspensions. It is disheartening, at best, that even school discipline is applied disproportionately. And what took place at Spring Valley High goes well beyond disproportion.

In the wake of such indecency, there has been a vigorous public response — shock and outrage, with many people denouncing Mr. Fields’s actions. There have also been those who questioned what the young girl did to beget such brutality and sought for her to take responsibility. Oh, how we are, as a culture, enamored with this ideal of responsibility when we don’t want to acknowledge the extent of an injustice or when we want to pretend that if we behave well enough, we will find the acceptance we have long been denied.

Sheriff Leon Lott defended some of his deputy’s actions and called for the young girl to accept responsibility, too. The sheriff also revealed that the deputy was dating a black woman, as if through such intimate connection, Mr. Fields might be absolved of any racism or wrongdoing. Nonetheless, Ben Fields has been fired and the Department of Justice has begun an investigation. There is the faintest hope that finally, justice will be done.

And yet, we have these inescapable reminders that no form of justice after the fact can erase trauma, or bring people back to life. There are the precedents of Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Samuel DuBose, Christian Taylor, and this is a list that has no end. When black people commit or are perceived to have committed infractions, the punishment is severe — physical brutality, prison or death without due process.

There are always questions, so many questions that elude both common sense and the heart of the matter at hand. What was the girl doing before the cameras started filming? The CNN anchor Don Lemon asked this question on the air. Why didn’t she comply with white authority? Why didn’t she just behave, fall in line? This question came from Raven-Symoné, a co-host of “The View,” also on the air.

Time and again, in such situations, black people are asked, why don’t we mind our place? To be black in America is to exist with the presumption of guilt, burdened by an implacable demand to prove our innocence. We are asked impossible questions by people who completely ignore a reality where so many of the rules we are supposed to follow are expressly designed to subjugate and work against our best interests. We ignore the reality that we cannot just follow the rules and find our way to acceptance, equality or justice. Respectability politics are a delusion.

Far too little attention is being given to who the young girl is, or that, according to the lawyer representing her, she is in foster care. When that officer saw her, sitting quietly, defiantly, she was not allowed to be human. She was not allowed to have a complex story. She was held to a standard of absolute obedience. She was not given the opportunity to explain the why of her defiance because she was a black body that needed to be disciplined by any means necessary.

Michel Foucault — the philosopher who was deeply concerned about power and how power was enforced — wrote of the panopticon, inspired by the work of Jeremy Bentham, who designed a prison where prisoners could be watched without knowing when or if they were being watched. Discipline, in such a structure, would be enforced by prisoners never knowing when the watchful eye would be turned toward them. We can certainly see how the panopticon functions in any organization predicated on hierarchies of power and the preservation of that power.

Technology has made the world a panopticon. It has widened the range of who watches and who is watched. Each day, we learn of a new injustice against the black body and in many cases, we now have pictures, videos. We have incontrovertible evidence of flagrant brutalities though, sadly and predictably, this evidence is never enough. At some point, this evidence, these breathtaking, sickening images, will render us numb or they will break our hearts irreparably. There is no respite from the harsh reminder that our black bodies are not safe. The black bodies of those we love are not safe.

We are watchers and the watched, and we are burdened, never knowing when our best, or our most abject, moments will be preserved digitally and disseminated virally, exposing the vulnerabilities we aren’t allowed to keep to ourselves.

Given how pervasive surveillance has become, I would think the black body, black people would be safer. I would think that police officers or assorted racists would think twice before acting, inappropriately, against the black body. It is a horrifying, desperate reality where such people act with impunity, undeterred by the threat of surveillance. They know they might be seen and remain empowered in their racism, their sense of dominion. They realize the nauseating truth — there are some injustices, against certain groups of people, that can be witnessed without consequence.

Roxane Gay is the author of “An Untamed State” and “Bad Feminist” and a contributing opinion writer.

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What happened in South Carolina is a daily risk for black children
Harsh discipline isn't colorblind.
By Stacey Patton
October 28, 2015

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Stacey Patton is a journalist, creator of Spare the Kids and author of "That Mean Old Yesterday: A Memoir."


Richland County, S.C., Sheriff's Deputy Ben Fields was called in to Spring Valley High School to remove a student. A classmate filmed the deputy slamming the student to the ground and dragging her through the classroom. (Reginald Seabrooks/YouTube)

In 1920, W.E.B. DuBois wrote: “There is no place for black children in this world.” Almost a century later, that remains true. Too often, to grow up black in the United States is to live in a perpetual state of vulnerability to the brutality of racism: People fear you, and you know there is no safe place for you. For many white children, the future is one of hope and endless possibilities. How can black children have hope, how can they dream, when they’re unable to feel safe, secure and loved by society?

The daily incidents are startling reminders of how far we have to go to secure a post-racial future. Black kids have been slapped on a plane for crying, verbally assaulted by racists on a school bus, terrorized at a birthday party by armed white men carrying Confederate flags, had their hair cut off in front of the class by a teacher, called “feral” in a viral, racist social media post, and assaulted by police at pool parties.

That precariousness in black children’s lives was on display again with this week’s viral video of a white cop brutally assaulting a black student in a Spring Valley, S.C., classroom. Many angry black viewers have been vocal on social media, reflecting a weary frustration: Just how much more of this are we expected to take?



In reality, though, this is not an isolated incident. This kind of harsh discipline has been the reality of growing up black and quasi-free in the United States for more than a century. What happened in Spring Valley isn’t an isolated individual attack on a black child; it’s an example of what our racist society does to black children far too often.

Like a growing number of schools across the country, Spring Valley High School in Richland County, S.C., has opened its doors to the police, with Ben Fields, a 34-year-old, hulking senior deputy in the sheriff’s department, patrolling its hallways as the school’s resource officer.

Despite lawsuits against him for excessive force, Fields had been entrusted by the school to protect students and make sure the learning environment was safe. But no one protected the 16-year-old black girl whom he grabbed by the neck and threw to the floor while she sat silent at her desk. No one protected her from being dragged and tossed across the floor like a ragdoll, forced into handcuffs and arrested.

Fields was called to the classroom to discipline the student, who — depending on which account you listen to — was either verbally disruptive, chewing gum, quiet or not bothering either her classmates or teacher. In other words, she was behaving like a normal teenager. But in the video, it appears she was treated like a criminal, a piece of trash that needed to be tossed aside without any regard for her feelings or rights. (Fields, meanwhile, will reportedly be fired on Wednesday.)

South Carolina is one of 19 states that still allow children to be whacked with wooden boards in schools for minor infractions, such as chewing gum, being late to class, talking back to a teacher, failing to do homework, violating the dress code, going to the bathroom without permission or more serious transgressions such as fighting. And like so much discipline in the United States, that punishment is often meted out disproportionately to black children. According to a survey from the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, black children made up 18 percent of our nation’s students but accounted for 35 percent of reported cases of corporal punishment in 2012. A 2014 report from Indiana University’s Equity Project found that black students are likely to be disciplined more frequently than their white peers, even though there’s no significant difference in behavior between the groups.

That’s often true whether it’s white adults or black adults hitting children. In April 2014, the Nation reported on the small town of Lexington, Miss., a state where 64 percent of all paddled students are black. There, the magazine found that most wielders of the paddle and vocal defenders of the practice are black educators. In Holmes County, a poor district where 99 percent of the students are black, white and black educators alike hit kids in day care and pre-school with pencils and rulers. Elementary and high school employee handbooks in that county call for the wooden paddle to be up to 30 inches long, half an inch thick, and from 2 to 3 inches wide. The teachers, according to the Nation, tell misbehaving students to “talk to the wood or go to the hood,” which means choose between being paddled or suspended from school.

The ACLU found that while corporal punishment rates in public schools have declined over the last 30 years, a disproportionate number of black students continue to be hit by teachers and principals. Data from the Education Department show that, as with suspensions and expulsions, black children are far more likely to be targeted for paddling than white students.

Dennis Parker, director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, examined school-based paddling and concluded that it not only negatively affects children, but also serves as the first stage in what’s known as the school-to-prison pipeline. His team found that students of color, especially black girls, are far more likely to be paddled than their white peers.

“So many of the problems in discipline disparities are the result of this idea of what is perceived to be threatening,” Parker told me. “People respond to black children differently and are more likely to read behaviors as being disrespectful and insubordinate. Teachers are more likely to punish black children because they are not aware of their own biases and how those biases affect the ways they interact with students.”

Parker’s examination of records from Mississippi schools found that white students tended to be paddled for infractions, such as drugs, vandalism or bringing weapons to school. Black students were punished for things like rolling their eyes, talking back, questioning a teacher or excessive noise.

“These are behaviors that involve someone’s perception of disrespect, and they are not divorced from race,” he said. In that context, hitting can be seen as not only acceptable, but necessary.

In 2014, the Children’s Defense Fund reported that more than 800 children were being hit each day at school, totaling close to 200,000 instances of corporal punishment a year. The ACLU and Human Rights Watch report that school paddlings send thousands of students to seek medical treatment for welts, bruises and broken bones. The long-term effect of this so-called tough love, according to the report, is that many children are becoming angry and lashing out at teachers and other students, rather than improving behavior. Some students become depressed, withdrawn or disengaged from school as a result; others seem resigned to the constant violence, accepting it as a fact of their daily lives.

As the Spring Hill video demonstrates, black girls are common targets. Earlier this year, the African American Policy Forum and Columbia Law School’s Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies released a report that found girls of color face much harsher school discipline than their white peers, citing numerous examples of excessive disciplinary actions against young black girls.

The most recent federal data cited in the report reveals that nationally black girls were suspended six times more than white girls, while black boys were suspended three times as often as white boys. In New York, there were more than 10 times as many disciplinary cases involving black girls as those involving their white counterparts, and the number of cases involving black boys was six times the number of those involving white boys, though there were only twice as many black students as white students.

Our states require school employees to report suspicions of child abuse at home. So why do so many of them allow and even encourage the same employees to hit children with wooden boards, placing them at risk for physical and psychological harm?

We imagine schools as places free from violence, where children are supposed to learn how to think, how to communicate, how to interact socially, and grow intellectually so they can become good citizens. So why are so many of them also places of metal detectors, paddles and aggressive cops who will toss a student across the room for being a teenager while black?

And yet the immediate response from some to the South Carolina incident — including Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott — has been to blame this child for being brutalized by a grown man.

No wonder that so many of our kids grow up expecting to be victims of brutality. No wonder that the kids in that classroom sat quietly, eyes downcast and frozen with fear as their classmate was attacked. The daily message from cops, principals, teachers and even from parents who tolerate this system by granting administrators permission to paddle their kids is clear: The world can beat you, attack you — even kill you — and it’s possible that nobody will dare, or care enough, to intervene. Everyone can assault you. You have no right to bodily integrity. No right to freedom of expression. You are never innocent; you are perceived as hostile, dangerous, and a threat to be beaten into submission. There is still no place for black children in this world.

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Man who slapped baby on plane sentenced to 8 months
by Associated Press
January 6, 2014

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Joe Rickey Hundley, 60, from Hayden, Idaho, was charged Friday by the FBI with simple assault for allegedly slapping a crying baby on a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta on Feb. 8 (Photo: Kootenai County Sheriff Office)

ATLANTA (AP) — A man who pleaded guilty to slapping a crying toddler on a U.S. flight has been sentenced to eight months in federal prison.

Joe Rickey Hundley was sentenced Monday. He pleaded guilty in October after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors.

Prosecutors say Hundley used a racial slur to refer to the 19-month-old boy, who is black, and hit him under the eye as the flight descended to the Atlanta airport in February.

Prosecutors had recommended six months in prison. The judge said he imposed a higher sentence in part because of Hundley's criminal history, which includes a prior assault.

Hundley's lawyer objected to the deviation from the recommendation in the plea agreement and said after the hearing that she believes the sentence is disproportionate.


A man charged with slapping a child while on a flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta has been fired by his employer. The toddler's mom says Joe Hundley slapped her son and called him a racial slur. VPC

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Racial bullying on Bloomfield Hills bus sparks outrage
by Ann Zaniewski
Detroit Free Press
April 16, 2015

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Bloomfield Hills students who were accused of using racial slurs to bully a boy have been disciplined at school — and may be in trouble with the law.

Prosecutors have been examining the case of the children who taunted 13-year-old Phoenix Williams, a Bloomfield Hills Middle School student, on a school bus last month. Phoenix captured footage of the incident on his cell phone.

Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper said her office has filed petitions with the juvenile courts in Wayne and Oakland county regarding the two. The petition cites one juvenile, who lives in Wayne County but was attending school in Bloomfield, with ethnic intimidation. The second juvenile was cited for harassment. Information about juveniles is not public unless and until a family court judge rules that the petitions will proceed.

"The court has wide discretion about what they can do," Cooper said this morning.

The judges can order the juveniles into an adjudication – the equivalent of a trial - or defer the case, ordering the juveniles into treatment or youth assistance programs. The judges can deny the petition, in which case it remains sealed.

The March 13 incident has sparked social media campaigns in support of Phoenix, who is black. Some students are planning a rally against racism Friday at the school.

Officials with the Bloomfield Hills Schools district say the students accused of taunting Phoenix have been disciplined.

"We will not tolerate this kind of behavior and have developed a plan of support for this young man to provide a safe environment for him," reads a statement on the district's website.

"We are proud of this student for coming forward and notifying an adult. It takes courage and strength to stand up to incidents of bullying, and we applaud him for taking that step."

A spokeswoman for the district, Shira Good, said in an e-mail Wednesday that she can't comment on the exact nature of the punishment "for legal reasons." She said the district is aware of the potential charges.

Bloomfield Township Police Lt. Dan Edwards said the boy and his mother filed a harassment complaint with police March 16. Officers launched an investigation before turning over the case to prosecutors.

Good said there were adults on the bus at the time, but they weren't nearby.

"As you can tell from the video Phoenix recorded, the bus was very noisy. The adults were several rows away from the students and were not aware of the incident. When staff were notified of the incident, they immediately involved police and launched a full investigation," she said.

Messages of support for Phoenix have popped up on Twitter in recent days under the hashtags #JusticeForPhoenix and #PROTESTBLOOMFIELD.

Bloomfield Hills High School junior Spencer Nabors, 16, said she's outraged by what happened to Phoenix. She and a friend started the hashtag #PROTESTBLOOMFIELD and are organizing a rally at 2:30 p.m. Friday outside of the middle school.

Spencer said the district needs to do more to combat racism and promote diversity.

"This is not a solo incident. Things like this have happened throughout the district for a while," she said. "We're hoping that the district will have sensitivity and diversity training."

Good said the district already has diversity-related programs in place. Officials hope to offer more training.

"We have invested more in the DAERR Initiative (Diversity, Academic Equity and Race Relations), Global Champions, and Institute for Healing Racism than any other project this year and we are committed long-term to this important work," she said in the e-mail.

The district has scheduled a forum at 6:30 p.m. April 28 in the Booth Center at 7273 Wing Lake Road "for community members to attend and speak together about the path forward."

Free Press staff writer L.L. Brasier contributed to this report. Contact Ann Zaniewski: 313-222-6594 or azaniewski@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @AnnZaniewski.

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Stories differ in Douglas County Confederate flag flap
by Tyler Estep
July 27, 2015

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Melissa Alford says videos show the aftermath of an ugly incident — a convoy of Confederate flag-bearing pickup trucks and their passengers interrupting a black child’s birthday party with threats and racial epithets.

Levi Bush, who was driving one of the trucks, says the videos show the unfortunate ending of an unintentional encounter — one triggered, in fact, by the people at that birthday party.

Whatever they show, the two cellphone videos from the Saturday afternoon incident off Douglasville’s Chapel Hill Road have been seen more than 200,000 times on Facebook. Authorities are now reviewing them to see if anything criminal occurred.

“Officers on scene were given conflicting statements as to what led up to the confrontation,” the Douglasville Police Department said in an emailed statement.

In one of the videos, Douglasville officers can be seen holding back a group of black men and women as at least seven pickup trucks drive off. The trucks’ white passengers wave as the Confederate, American and military flags mounted on the vehicles flap in the air.

“This is a child’s birthday party,” one woman in the crowd can be heard saying.

A second video shows the trucks gathered on a grassy area, and at least one racial slur can be heard. Alford, the woman hosting a family member’s birthday party, said the trucks drove by several times before parking in the field next to her house.

“One had a gun, saying he was gonna kill the [racial slur],” Alford told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Then one of them said gimme the gun, I’ll shoot them [racial slur].”

Bush, the leader of the caravan of trucks, told the AJC that his group is called “Protect the Flag” and is not a hateful one. They “drive around and sell flags,” he said, with all of the proceeds going to veterans or toward purchasing new American flags for those in need.

Bush said his group was leaving a nearby event when they drove by Alford’s home and the partygoers started yelling at the trucks in front of him. They then threw rocks at his vehicle, he said.

Bush said he fishtailed while trying to drive away, then ran over a median and got a flat tire. When he pulled into a nearby driveway, the partygoers swarmed and made threats, and his friends backed him up, he said.

“Basically about eight of us had to hold 15 to 20 of them back,” Bush said, admitting that a specific racial slur was likely used by members of his group.

Someone called 911 and police eventually arrived to separate the factions. Authorities said neither side claimed anything physical took place, and no injuries were reported. They are now reviewing videos to “see if any criminal activity occurred.”

Alford said she doesn’t care if people want to “ride around with their flags,” but said the incident went too far. She said she hasn’t stayed at her home since the incident.

“I don’t have a problem if that’s their culture,” Alford said. “… If they want to make a statement that these flags mean something to them, I’m OK with that. But you’ve got to do it right. You can’t go around just blatantly terrorizing people.”

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7 Years Later & We’re Still Mad: Milwaukee Teacher Cuts Off Student’s Natural Hair & Throws It Away In Front Of Class
by Danielle Young

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This shocking story happened in 2009 [December 11, 2009] and it’s something that still bothers us and it’s sure to bother you too beauties.



7-year-old Lamya Cammon was playing with her hair in class, like most 7-year-old girls do, when her Congress Elementary school teacher asked her to stop. The teacher then called her to the front of the class where she cut one of Lamya’s braids in half and sent her back to her desk. Wait, she did what? Yes, you read that correctly. The teacher cut one of her braids off as a punishment in front of her classmates.

According to a local news report, Lamya was extremely upset by the incident. She told a reporter, “I went to my desk and cried. And they was laughing, She threw it away, and she said, ‘Now what you gonna go home and say to your momma? ‘ And I said, ‘That you cut off my hair.'”

Of course Lamya’s mother, Helen Cunningham was and still is understandably furious. She did what any mother would do–she went to the school to confront Lamya’s teacher. Helen Cammon told WISN News that the teacher apologized, but said that she was frustrated. She said that the school district should seriously question whether the teacher should keep her job. “Why would we want someone like that teaching our kids? We trust our kids once they go to school to be safe,” Cunningham said.

“The main thing is, from the heart of the principal, and me speaking for the district, we’re very sorry that this happened,” Milwaukee Public School spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin said. The Milwaukee police investigated this case and sent it over to the district attorney for possible physical or mental abuse of a child charges. The district attorney’s office decided not to file criminal charges and the police issued the teacher a $175 ticket for disorderly conduct.

Wow, that’s it? Let’s just imagine if a Black teacher would have cut off a White student’s pigtail? Take a moment, think about that again.

What do you think beauties? Sound off in the comments below.

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Atlanta marketing company fires employee after viral selfie surfaces with racist comments about co-worker’s son
BY NICOLE HENSLEY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
October 5, 2015, 11:32 PM

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Gerod Roth, pictured in a selfie with a little boy named Cayden, was fired from his job at Polaris Marketing Group days after posting the photo that attracted racist comments.

A former employee at an Atlanta-based marketing firm is at the center of a firestorm after a photo he posted of himself online with a colleague's black son unleashed a wave of racist bile from the man's friends and other Internet hatemongers.

Polaris Marketing Group employee Gerod Roth was fired after snapping a seemingly innocuous selfie alongside 3-year-old Cayden Jenkins and posting it to Facebook on Sept. 16, triggering an immediate torrent of hateful comments, including "I didn't know you were a slave owner" and "But Massuh, I dindu nuffin" while also calling the young boy "Kunta Kinte."

It was unclear what prompted the string of hateful jibes, but at some point Roth - who goes by the name Geris Hilton on Facebook - replied to a friend asking "Dude where the hell did you get a black kid??" by saying, "He was feral."

Polaris Marketing Group President Michael Da Graca Pinto called the Facebook comments "disgusting," but insisted Roth's Sept. 29 termination two weeks after the post was the result of unrelated issues at work.

“It breaks my heart that Sydney and her adorable son Cayden were subjected to such hateful, ignorant and despicable behavior,” Pinto wrote in a statement over the weekend.“Cayden visits my office almost every afternoon after daycare, he's sat at my dinner table,”

The entire post was taken out of context, Roth told WAGA-TV, explaining that his intended meaning addressed a comment asking where he found Cayden.


Gerod Roth faced the media to defend himself.

“I just really feel upset, not only with myself, but also with the character that was based on the comments my friends made,” Roth told the TV station on Monday. “I feel as if, not only poor Cayden himself has been victimized, but also myself for being targeted.”

Little Cayden's mother, Sydney Shelton, took to Facebook with a handful of photos of her smiling son, saying those images should be what people see of Cayden — not the viral selfie captured in what appears to be the Polaris office.

He is nothing like the characterization woven in Roth’s since-deleted post, his tearful mother later explained.

“He is not a deaf child, he is not mute. He has never been abandoned,” Shelton told WAGA-TV. “He is a well-loved, fun-loving hyperactive 3-year-old.

A GoFundMe page started by a Phoenix, Ariz., woman, Britt Turner, is collecting donations for a college fund for Cayden in case the viral story marrs his name for future search results.

“I would hate for him to find all of this negativity surrounding his name,” Turner wrote.

Shelton is glad Roth is no longer employed at Polaris, but ultimately she is looking out for Cayden’s well-being.

“I do everything that I can to make sure he never has to want or need for anything,” Shelton cried. “To see people bashing him -- a small helpless child -- it breaks my heart.”

Polaris Marketing Group
October 2 at 3:20pm

This morning I was disgusted to learn that one of my former employees made several racially charged comments on his personal Facebook page. Even worse, the comments were directed toward the son of another employee.

It breaks my heart that Sydney and her adorable son Cayden were subjected to such hateful, ignorant and despicable behavior. Cayden visits my office almost every afternoon after daycare, he's sat at my dinner table and I consider him a part of the PMG family.

The atrocious lies, slander and racism he and his mother have been forced to endure are wholly intolerable. Myself and the entire PMG family in no way condones this kind of behavior and would never willingly associate with anyone who does.

It has no place in the world.

PMG has terminated the employee responsible and will ensure that none of the businesses that we associate with will ever do business with him again.

Sincerely,

Michael Da Graca Pinto
President
Polaris Marketing Group, Inc.

[admin]

Cop fractures 12-year-old girl’s jaw, ribs during city pool arrests caught on video
by the Grio
June 17, 2015

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Fairfield, Ohio — Krystal Dixon had just dropped off her kids and nieces and nephews at the pool for a day of summer fun when she got a call that the kids were being asked to leave because one of them wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. She promised to grab the forgotten swimwear and bring it to the pool, but when she arrived, she and a few of the teenage girls had to be rushed to the hospital following a clash with police officers who had arrived to escort Dixon and her family from the premises.

Dixon and her family provided vastly different accounts of what happened than the police did. The family accused cops of excessive force, pointing to the fact that Dixon, who is pregnant, had to be checked out by doctors after the incident and that cops pepper sprayed teenage girls. What’s more, Dixon’s 12-year-old niece, who officers grabbed by the neck and slammed against the car, suffered a fractured jaw and broken ribs.

Dixon said that she arrived to the pool and was informed by staff that the kids had broken pool rules when the swimsuit-less child swam in his clothes. They were asked to leave, and Dixon started to gather up her children. That’s when, according to Dixon, a park ranger began following her and took out his handcuffs when teens approached to see what was going on.

When Dixon could not provide ID because she did not have it on her, the officer grabbed her arm, and the kids asked him to let her go. From there, the situation escalated.

While Dixon claims the officers used unnecessary force, Fairfield police officer Doug Day said that “they refused to leave and became even more verbally aggressive and belligerent” and that Dixon’s sister “started jumping on the park ranger’s back.”

“Our officers used great restraint,” Day said. “At one point, one of our officers felt his gun was being taken away from him. The only weapon he used was the OC spray, to get someone off the back of the officer.”

But not everyone is convinced of the officers’ account, with Bishop Bobby Hilton, a Cincinnati pastor who belongs to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, saying, “They’re saying a 12-year-old was assaulting somebody and resisting being arrested. Please tell me, where is she assaulting somebody? Why did the officer have to grab her by the neck and push her against the car? It’s just not right.”

Clyde Bennett, an attorney for Dixon, added: “I could surmise or opine on why [pool staff] wanted them out. They said they’re not appropriately dressed. I’m not convinced that’s why they wanted them out of the pool.”