Op-Ed piece of a local school

“I can’t breathe”

By Jane Hoffman

 Darryl Gates, LAPD Chief of Police for over 25 years, believed in a carotid choke hold that would subdue police suspects to a manageable state.  It cost James Mincey, Jr. his life, a 20 year old Black man who got stopped routinely in Pacoima for a cracked windshield.  He was maced and murdered by police in his own driveway late one night.  The police implemented the chokehold at that moment.  To cover up their actions, Darryl Gates made a comment he was probably on PCP which he was not and it was proven by lab tests. Darryl Gates once said that according to the anatomy of African Americans, their arteries don’t open as fast as “normal people,” meaning white people.  He claimed that as the justification for Black people dying faster under a chokehold, which many did.  Later, the Mincey family won 1.1 million dollars from the City of Los Angeles for what the police perceived as an infraction.

 In this region, I served as a Special Ed Aide at an elementary school.  I recently resigned, mainly due to stress and lack of administrative support to resolve key issues.   Another employee at the same school that several office staff at the school did not like, was put in a socially generated chokehold mainly due to lack of coordination between key teachers and a past she could not erase.  One teacher felt she did not successfully implement goals with a specific one on one student.  The head teacher in charge offered no advice, just expressed he was unable to help her and asked, “Weren’t you trained?”  A month or so later, the principal of the school told her there was an accusation from a child who said this employee hit her on the bus.  Her badge and pay was removed for two days.  Later, she got paid but never got her badge back.  The grandparent of the child I personally know told me the school never approached the mother of the child who was involved.   No one in the family had heard about the incident.

  

The employee under surveillance was let go a week later by board consent.  The principal brought up the bus incident even though it never occured and predicated a damaged reputation before the vote was taken.  The day the board voted her out of her job, she was provided a police order that she should be banned from school property forever.  She had made one last ditch effort to apply as a crossing guard.  She lives one block away from the school she worked at.  The principal lied and said she had tried to enter the school grounds within the last month of her employment.  She was out on leave with a respiratory illness involving pneumonia and did not try to enter school grounds.  She was too ill to approach the school and had no reason.  The principal stated on April 5, 2019, she tried to enter the school property.  There is no footage, no cameras, no CCTV evidence.  Three days later, her termination was on the books.

As a school employee, I flew below the radar, and ignored the facts in front of me.  Could it be true a school police officer who was liaison to the school, would take the principal’s word at face value and not investigate if an employee had entered school grounds for no set purpose or to cause malice?  Another Student aide at the school invented a lie that the same fired employee had swore at a kid.  This never happened.  This same aide who does not even possess an Associate’s degree, has been asked to substitute teach in classes during shortages.  No other school associates were called upon who had teaching licenses and were available.  A circle of deception had been created between three employees including the principal that contributed to the eventual termination of the employee.

  

I wanted to continue my investigation into the matter of the forsaken employee.  I went to the police department one Monday to obtain publicly accessed reports regarding the school trespass ban.  I had notified one police officer I would like to interview him.  I asked him if he perceived this former employee as a threat?  He refused to interview with me and told me he does not discuss past cases.  When I arrived at the police station, one of the officers refused to provide me with the requested reports.  A local news publication said I should have the right to them.  The police officer in charge, told me “We were expecting you.”  In January 2019, nine months after her termination,  the same former employee who had been banned on school property lost her job at a local private school as a substitute apparently by someone downgrading her reputation.  She was taken off the sub list.  Edmund Burke, an English statesman once said  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  My pursuit of knowledge in this case, is not to expose but to erase calculated lies.  The employee liked her job and had 15 years of working with children.  She is now an outsider in her own community with an A around her neck, waiting for a looming death sentence or another ax to fall   I worked in a gang ridden neighborhood near Pacoima at San Fernando High school as a student teacher.   My 14 year old student was executed by a gun at a bus stop.  I still find that a lying tongue is more definitive than a bullet.   It can clog up the arteries of truth and crack perception much deeper than a windshield.  Once the glass is cracked, the truth comes gushing out. 

Jane Hoffman was an editorial assistant at the Los Angeles Times.  She has written for the Duluth Reader, Duluth News Tribune and the Superior Telegram.  She went to UCLA for journalism.