From The Telegraph (UK)
Alabama students sue authorities over alleged police brutality
A group of school pupils in Alabama is suing the local education authority for running a "police state" in which officers are allegedly using "chemical weapons" to enforce discipline.
Seven students in Birmingham, Alabama, have filed a class action lawsuit against the city's education board and the local police force over the frequent use of Mace, or pepper spray, in schools.
The spray is readily used to "enforce basic school discipline", the lawsuit claims, and "school personnel not only watch, but sometimes even celebrate when schoolchildren are maced".
The city has police officers in every school under a scheme designed to ensure the safety of pupils, the lawsuit states. But "officers have abandoned their primary mission", the pupils allege, "in order to become stools of school personnel who have abdicated their disciplinary responsibilities".
Teachers call them in to handle even "minor incidents of childish misbehaviour", including pupils swearing or not doing what they are told, claim the pupils, who are aged between 16 and 19.
They are being represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the renowned civil rights group, and claim to have been "brutalised with chemical weapons and other excessive force".
One boy claims that while he was in ninth grade – between 14 and 15 years old – he and others standing near a fight between two pupils were sprayed in the face by a police officer.
"Because Mace is used so frequently and so indiscriminately in Birmingham's public high schools, each plaintiff faces a real and substantial risk of future and repeated injury," the pupils allege.
They list the potential damage to the eyes and throat that can be caused by frequent subjection to pepper spray, especially to pupils with health conditions such as asthma. The lawsuit, which is filed on behalf of the 8,000 pupils in Birmingham, seeks damages and demands officials "immediately abandon the use of chemical and other weapons" against schoolchildren.
The schools board did not respond to a request for comment.
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