This is a video of a school bus driver attacking a child with disabilities. It’s hard to watch, but worth watching for the following reasons (and maybe more):
- The other kids are standing up for their classmate, telling the bus driver he can’t do it.
- One child was holding the cell phone that caught this video and led to the arrest of the driver. Another child, at about 28 seconds, can be seen pulling out his phone to record the driver.
- It’s the “cult of compliance” embodied, yet again. The driver gives a command, the student disobeys, and the driver then uses that to justify (to himself and in the aftermath) his use of force. It’s the same phenomenon as Spring Valley High and thousands of other incidents (use the tags to track them, though I’m still implementing tags consistently in the first 500 post on the blog). From the local news report:
Johnston police said the driver approached 15-year-old Christian, a student with special needs, after he failed to follow the bus driver’s instructions regarding a seat assignment.
Police said the student directed an inflammatory comment toward the bus driver who grabbed the student’s coat, hit the boy in the face and pushed him to the floor.
Here’s the video. Obvious warnings apply, though it’s more disturbing than graphic.