Catherine Thompson / Talking Points Memo & Lauren McGaughy / The Houston Chronicle & The Daily Kos – 2015-02-01 00:21:22

Bill Would Allow Texas Teachers To Kill Students Threatening School Property

Bill Would Allow Texas Teachers
To Kill Students Threatening School Property
Catherine Thompson / Talking Points Memo

(January 30, 2015) — Legislation filed last week in Texas would allow teachers to use deadly force in order to protect school property, the Houston Chronicle reported. [See story below— EAW.]

State Rep. Dan Flynn (R), who’s previously fought to roll back concealed handgun license requirements, filed the Teacher’s Protection Act authorizing educators to use deadly force to protect themselves or another person on school grounds.
The bill would also authorize the use of deadly force to protect school property and shield any teacher who uses deadly force from prosecution should they cause injury or death.

Texas law already offers immunity from discipline to teachers who use “reasonable” force against a student, according to the Chronicle. State law also allows any adult to carry a firearm in a school with the principal’s permission.

A lobbyist with the Association of Texas Professional Educators, Monty Exter, told the Chronicle that the protections in Flynn’s bill are not “any different than the protection that exists in law for a regular citizen.”

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Bill Would Allow Texas Teachers
To Use Deadly Force against Students
Lauren McGaughy / The Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN (January 28, 2015) — Teachers would be able to use deadly force against students, and would be safe from prosecution, under legislation filed last week in the state House.

The Teacher’s Protection Act by Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van, would allow educators to use force or deadly force if they feel they need to protect themselves against a student or anyone else on school grounds. It also allows teachers to use deadly force to protect school property, and to avoid prosecution “for injury or death that results from the educator’s use of deadly force.”

The bill was filed just days before a video of a New Jersey physics teacher being body slammed by his 9th grade student went viral. In the video, it’s clear the teacher is avoiding fighting back or touching the student.

Monty Exter, lobbyist with the state’s largest educator group, said the Association of Texas Professional Educators believes these policies should be determined at the local level. Currently, Texas law allows educators who use reasonable force against a student to be immune from disciplinary proceedings. Flynn’s additional would doubly protect teachers, since the law also states the “use of force, but not deadly force, against a (student) is justified.”

Exter added the ATPE’s legal team doesn’t believe Flynn’s legislation adds any additional protections for teachers that don’t already exist for every Texan claiming self-defense: “We understand he’s trying to carve out some liability protections. But, we can’t see that the liability protection in that particular bill is any different than the protection that exists in law for a regular citizen.”

“Educators in Texas actually do have some legal protections that do allow them to use physical force to protect themselves and protect others, as long as the use of physical force is reasonable,” said ATPE managing attorney Paul Tapp.

Lauren McGaughy is a reporter in the Houston Chronicle’s Austin bureau. She can be reached at lauren.mcgaughy@chron.com or on Twitter @lmcgaughy.

Student Attacks Teacher
(January 27, 2015) — This is what happens in our schools these days? A student slams his 62-year-old teacher for taking his phone away at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson, New Jersey.

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Texas bill will allow teachers to kill students to protect school ‘property’
Hunter / Opinion: The Daily Kos

(January 29, 2015) — This may be the most Texas thing I have ever heard.

The Lone Star State already permits teachers to have firearms in the classroom, but H.B. 868, also known as the Teacher’s Protection Act, would authorize instructors to use “force or deadly force on school property, on a school bus, or at a school-sponsored event in defense of the educator’s person or in defense of students of the school that employs the educator.”

Instructors would also have the right to use deadly force “in defense of property of the school that employs the educator.” Moreover, civil immunity would be granted to those who use deadly force, meaning they would not be liable for the injury or death of student.

Having a teacher whip out his or her trusty sidearm to protect one’s students from encroaching bears or Muslims or one of Texas’s many, many other proud gun-toters who may have momentarily lost one’s mind is one thing, but instructing teachers that they are to use deadly force in defense of school property and that they don’t have to worry about getting sued afterwards, now that adds a whole new layer o’ Texas.

Presumably this new law is needed because on occasion teachers have come across students defacing school lockers and have been previously unclear on whether or not that is sufficient grounds to shoot them in the head (answer: yes!) or because little Timmy (oh, who am I kidding, little Miguel) is preparing to carve his initials into a desk and only a teacher’s well-placed bullet can stop the destruction of school property that is about to occur.

(This also stands to make turn-in-your-textbooks day considerably more exciting. Better hope I don’t see any penned-in mustaches in your history book, you little snots.)

I’m honestly trying to come up with a scenario in which having a teacher execute someone on campus “in defense of” school “property” does not sound like the dumbest thing anyone has ever proposed, and I’m drawing a blank. Perhaps the bill’s author, State Rep. Dan Flynn (R-BecauseDuh), has this sketched out in his own mind, but the rest of us may need a bit more explanation.

Then again, summary execution for property crimes has been high on the Texas list of must-have laws for some time now, so expanding it to every teacher at your kid’s school must no doubt be considered a perfectly logical extension.

Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.

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