While some schools are opting to hire private prison employees to conduct searches on their student body, other schools like this one in the article below seem to just flat-out encourage a system of bullying their students. To be perfectly clear, by bullying, I don’t mean kids-teasing-kids; I’m talking about school officials physically assaulting and threatening kids…not to mention breaking the law by forcing a student to destroy evidence of a crime.
Excerpt from PINAC – “Joel Franco, the 17-year-old aspiring journalist from Miami who’s been written about on PINAC before, was threatened with a ten-day suspension today if he didn’t delete a video showing a school security guard body slamming another student to the ground.
“I started to walk away because it was already time to go back to class and the security guard grabbed the strap of my camera back and shoved me against a wall.”
That security guard was joined by another security guard and a schoolteacher who kept demanding he hand over his phone, but Franco kept refusing…”
Joel Franco posing with the camera he earned from his Youtube earnings.
Recap: After Joel unintentionally ended up filming a video that showed a school security guard body-slamming another student to the ground, school officials went to great lengths to intimidate Joel into erasing the video from his phone. When physical intimidation by the rent-a-cops didn’t work, the assistant principal joined in the effort to make Joel destroy evidence by threatening him with a 10 day detention if he refused to delete the incriminating video footage.
It was only in the face of a threat that could radically change the course of his future that Joel finally caved in and allowed school officials to erase evidence of a crime that was committed on school grounds…by school employees. A 10 day suspension here in our school district could cause a kid to lose all credits for a semester and could drastically alter the odds of getting into a college of his/her choice – I assume the principal at Joel’s school was well aware of the weight carried by such a threat and to me it illustrates just how desperate officials were to force a cover-up.
My question here is…are school officials now going to be investigated and charged for destroying evidence of a possible crime? If so…when? Because yesterday isn’t soon enough…and if there will be no investigation or charges….WHY THE HELL NOT??
I hope parents of other kids at this school step up and get involved and demand a full and open investigation into both the initial altercation that Joel filmed – as well as the actions taken to intimidate Joel into erasing the footage.
You can read the full – infuriating – account of events here at Photography Is Not A Crime
Read more about Joel and his determination to keep filming events -
Miami Teen has Three Run-ins With Authorities Over Video Recording
Like Joel’s page on Facebook - World Must Wake Up
Check out his YouTube channel.
Infuriating covering your ass behavior…
Holy crap!! All kinds of wrong there. Why isn’t this being investigated? I’m glad Joel perseveres and keeps taking the videos, I just hope he doesn’t get truly hurt sometime by some other “bully”. When the school knew what a 10 day suspension could mean to a kid, that is outright bullying him. And bullying him into destroying evidence? Fucked up I tell you!! What disgusting behavior out of what society deems “an adult”. They sound like a bunch of bullies to me, body slamming students…come on. This student, Joel, obviously has more brains and morals than any of these other so-called school officials.
It took me over an hour after catching the original story to write about it at all…my blood was boiling over everything wrong here! Start at the original confrontation and end with officials blatantly forcing a kid to break the law…RAWR! So far I can’t find anything else about parents demanding an investigation or anything which boggles my mind. Messed up world, messed up people…! >.<