About two weeks ago, we wrote a story about a student who was shot and killed by police in a bathroom in Austin-East High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. The student’s name was Anthony J. Thompson Jr. At the time, the security and video footage had not been released. In that post, we made the argument that families who are afraid to go to their assigned school should be able to attend another school. Since our original comments, much has happened at Austin-East. First, the school and police have released security footage of the incident and activity prior to the altercation. Second, students have begun to react to the violence of the situation. Today we will consider the evidence and try to really navigate what is going on in this school environment.
First, we need to acknowledge that some of the video footage was disturbing and violent. Right now, news sources are focused on those protesting the student/law enforcement altercation. 30 students marched downtown, and other activists attended the school board meeting break out session on school discipline, hoping for clarity on the role of law enforcement in schools. It is clear that, like much of the country, there is some concern about how police handled the situation.
But, as is often the case, there are multiple perspectives to be considered here. In the released video footage, there were several disturbing elements before there was ever a gun involved. First, due to prior conflict in the day, Thompson’s ex-girlfriend retreated to the principal's office for safety during the school day. Regina Perkins, the girl’s mother, confirmed this in an interview with the police. She explained that her daughter no longer felt like her classroom could provide safety.
Still, Thompson felt no fear from administrators when pounding on the principal’s locked door until his ex-girlfriend came out to meet with him in the school hallway. At this time, the principal had stepped away, but Thompson’s audacity seems remarkable. It also seems clear that at this point, school administration considered the young man threatening and knew he was armed. And yet, no one calls security or the police to deal with the student. Why? As an organization deeply invested in supporting environments where effective education can happen, this lack of action by school personnel feels disturbing. Maybe this has to do with a concern for how the police would handle the situation. Who knows? But at this point, we don’t know why they did not take action as the school has not returned calls or messages to comment.
Police camera footage with Regina Perkins on her porch also describes moments after this encounter when her daughter calls and begs her mother to let her come home. Regina Perkins is quoted several times saying, “I didn’t want my daughter to be the next tragedy, so I told her to come home.” Once her daughter is home, Perkins called the police herself, most likely knowing that the school was not going to take care of the situation. This parent is clearly scared for her daughter’s life, and she does not trust the school to handle the situation. Though she has said she is sorry for what happened to Thompson and regrets calling the police, the video leaves no doubt that she was extremely concerned for her daughters’ well-being.
Finally, maybe the most bizarre footage from the released video is the security video of Thompson frequenting a bathroom and a stairwell where the security team knew he spent much of his day hanging out and talking on his cell phone. He seems to be there for hours, never attending class. Is this common? If he is not attending classes, why does he seem to just be hanging around the school? When the police arrive and they cannot see him on the school’s security cameras anymore, the school’s security guard identifies the bathroom where he can probably be found because that’s one of the places that he often hangs out. From the looks of it, Thompson’s day appears to consist of simply roaming the school while armed with a pistol. At one point in the video, the school’s security personnel observe that part of the problem was if anyone attempted to look in his backpack he would simply run away . The security team couldn’t control his behavior in the school, and they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take steps to keep him out of the building.
In no way are we condoning or affirming his death. He was in a school bathroom with a gun, and it is devastating that Anthony Thompson passed away under these circumstances. But we are interested in getting to the bottom of the culture of gun violence and permissive security in this community and at this school. No family should feel so afraid of what is happening in a school that they should have to call the police. As articulated in the previous post, schools should not ignore parental safety concerns. And if they do ignore them, families should not feel trapped in schools that they fear are unsafe for their children. Giving families the choice to leave unsafe schools would hold schools accountable for creating a safe environment; a condition that Austin-East High School in Knoxville seems unable to establish.