Sometimes parents exaggerate in praising their children. But the mother of Niya Kenny, an 18-year-old student at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, is spot-on when she describes as brave Kenny’s actions in response to school cop Ben Fields on Monday roughing up and arresting a fellow student. “My child, and I’m not mad at her, she was brave enough to speak out against what was going on and didn’t back down and it resulted in her being arrested,” says Kenny’s mother.
In militarized American schools, small discipline matters can quickly result in school-based or called-in cops roughing up and arresting students. Such was the case in Kenny’s math class this week when Fields responded to a complaint of a student’s failure to either participate or leave the class by yanking the student out of her seat and attached desk, hurling her across the classroom floor, and arresting her.
In a WLTX-TV story, Kenny says she was “in disbelief” and “screaming and crying like a baby” in reaction to what the cop did. Kenny relates that she filmed the cop’s actions and complained about those actions. Fields’ response? He arrested Kenny too, for a charge that comes nowhere near even approaching passing the laugh test — “disturbing school.”
Kenny’s mother is right. Kenny is a brave young lady. In this age of SWAT it is indeed brave for Kenny to exercise her rights to film the police and criticize their actions. It is also just such brave actions that many more people must undertake if we are to overcome the police-state mentality rampant in America.
