You’ve got to have a certain amount of self-confidence to be a successful high school band director. But the director who got tasered and arrested last week after a football game ended in Birmingham, Ala., was way out of line even though he doesn’t seem to realize it.
The two bands stayed around after the game to perform from the stands in what’s often called the “fifth quarter.” The extra music is always fun, but when the police decide it’s time for everyone to leave, that needs to be the end of the story.
For some reason, the band director at one school decided his kids weren’t finished playing. The Birmingham Police Department released an officer’s body camera video of the incident that shows plainly how the director went from a school leader to a lousy role model for teenagers.
Because the band was playing, some of the dialogue was unintelligible. But it is clear that as officers stood in front of the band director and told him to stop the music, he repeatedly told them, “Get outta my face.”
When one officer said the band director would go to jail, and another said she was going to contact the school, the director flashed two thumbs up and said, “That’s cool.” The stadium managers even turned off the lights, but the band continued to play for a few more seconds.
Now, does all this rise to the level of using a Taser? Maybe not. But the officers gave the band director a lawful order, which he chose to ignore — in front of 145 students.
The director claimed afterward that he was winding down the music, but the video also shows him making a circular signal with one hand that presumably was an instruction to keep playing. There is never any indication on the video that he was going to stop his kids from playing until the lights went out.
All that prompted the officers to try to arrest the band director. The officers claimed the director tried to push one of them, though the body camera video does not show that. Police said when he refused to put his hands behind his back to be handcuffed, an officer stunned him into submission with a Taser.
That produced the expected shocked and screaming reaction from the band members. The police are being criticized for what they did, but nobody’s asking whether the band director acted properly.
That’s because he didn’t. (The band director and all the officers involved are Black.) Anybody who tells a police officer to get out of his face is sending a signal of defiance. And the director followed that up by refusing to stop the music until the lights went out.
It would have been so easy for him right away to clench his fingertips and move his arms horizontally across his chest — the standard band signal to stop playing. The police decided the fifth quarter was over. That should have been it.
Instead, for no good reason, the band members had to watch their director get tasered and arrested. He basically dared them to do it.
It’s really no surprise that the officers did.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
