Harry J. Houck, CNN's go-to for all police brutality incident cleansing and spinning, appeared this morning on CNN with Chris Cuomo to discuss how uppity that black child was toward a police officer, and why she had it coming. They always have it coming, don't they?
In the span of just over three minutes, Houck claimed the school was a hotbed of "violent gang activity, that the girl had no respect for her school, her teachers, her parents or anything else, and basically, the bitch had it coming. Remarkably, his commentary is a voice over while the video of her being tossed across the room is playing, but don't believe your lyin' eyes, folks. Listen to the cop. Always listen to the cop.
Houck is the same CNN "expert" who claimed police brutality never goes unpunished, that Sandra Bland would be alive if she'd just been less arrogant, called for Mayor De Blasio to resign for his "tone" toward NYPD, and said Trayvon Martin would be alive today if he didn't have such an uppity attitude.
You see the pattern there, right? Always the fault of the black person, never the infallible police. Never. Race never an issue, until they get uppity. That's this man's schtick, and CNN puts him on over and over and over again.
Marc Lamont Hill tried to point toward the question of why a police officer was called in for basic classroom management 101, but Cuomo and Houck were having none of it. The entire segment was intended to place all blame on the girl who was thrown across the room before the cop put a knee in her back because...uppity.
Full transcript follows, as best as my limited transcript skills can do.
Houck: There's a police officer in that school for a reason. A lot of violent gang activity in that school.
Now, this officer's called to the classroom because this student will not leave the classroom. Apparently the teacher had some kind of a problem. Now the teacher who was supposedly trained on how to handle children like this calls the police for the officer to come in.
The officer tells her twice to get out of her chair, she won't get out of the car - out of the chair.
Therefore we have this altercation which she does not get really hurt in.
The officer pulls her out, handcuffs her, alright? Can the officer do that? Yes, he can.
Cuomo: Why?
Houck: Because she failed to comply, you are under arrest, you're failing to comply now. Alright, so the officer can use whatever force is necessary to effect an arrest.
Now, it looks really bad, like a lot of videos we've sat here and talked about before in the past. How bad the video looks.
She did not get hurt, alright, so apparently the officer did it in a way in which she did not get hurt. It just looks bad in the video.
Cuomo: Harry, if you get called to this classroom and this kid says I'm not getting out of the room, what do you do? I'm not getting out of the chair. Not doing it.
Houck: You pull her out of the chair.
Cuomo: and as you pull, she's not letting go. Then what do you do?
Houck: You pull her out of the chair and you -- Yes, exactly! That's exactly what you do.
Houck: What're you supposed to do? Stand around and wait for her to get out of the chair?
Cuomo: no, I think that you have to -- Marc, what do you do in this situation? You get called to the classroom, you're a police officer, the teacher says I can't control this kid, you say get out of the chair, she says no. Now what?
Marc Lamont Hill: Well before we get to the point where the police officer's called, Chris, I think that's part of the problem that we have to analyze, right?
[crosstalk]
No, no no, I'm saying in this specific case this child was criminalized -- no, let me answer this question first -- this child was criminalized when the police officer was called for classroom management. We're outsourcing classroom management to the police now. That is part of the problem in this case, not in the abstract -- I'm saying in this case.
Cuomo: People see this video, they don't think policy. They think, how was this necessary in this circumstance. So when you see this and you hear what Harry's saying -- you've gotten to know Harry, you understand that it's always coming from a place of reality -- when you see how the officer addresses the specifics what do you see as the criticism?
Hill: How quickly he went from zero to 60 in terms of the use of force, the type of force that was used. For example, and I don't support any use of force against this child, but for example, what would be the difference between grabbing the desk and pulling the desk forward, not putting a hand on the child's body and physically taking the child, slamming her to the ground and putting his knee in her back and just saying well, it wasn't that bad because she wasn't hurt. That's not the standard for when the use of force is reasonable in a classroom.
Houck: Here's the problem. This is a failure to comply game. In all these cases here, people don't listen to the police when they give them a command. You must comply.
And then Marc's giving people the impression that you don't have to comply to police officers. And that's why we're having a lot of incidences.
Hill: I haven't said that at all.
Houck: You're giving that impression, Marc, every time I speak to you. You always have a problem talking about an officer's use of force and I'm telling you it's as a result of failure to comply.
If that girl got out of the seat when she was told there'd be no problem but apparently she had no respect for the school, no respect for the teacher, probably has no respect at home or on the street and that's why she acted the way she did.
