Supreme Court Rules: Fights at school can disturb the peace of security officers who intervene
LINCOLN NE Dec 17 2017 — Sief Mahagoub breaks up his share of fights as a school security officer.
But one violent struggle a year ago between two girls at Lincoln Southeast High School stood out. It involved roughly three minutes of screaming, punches and hair-pulling. It was “very intense and very difficult to stop,” he later told authorities.
That’s saying something for a former military police officer who served three tours of duty in Iraq.
A prosecutor later named Mahagoub the victim in a disturbing-the-peace charge against the 17-year-old instigator of the fight.
The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday ruled such a charge was appropriate, even though quelling fights comes with the job for a school security officer.
The Lancaster County Public Defender’s Office appealed the charge against the girl, arguing that school security officers do not have an expectation of “peace and tranquility because of their training and duties.”
The appeal cited past rulings that said directing “fighting words” toward police officers doesn’t disturb their peace. The public defenders argued that police frequently hear offensive language and have been trained to defuse such situations without retaliating.
Connor Reuter with the Lincoln City Attorney’s Office, however, offered three other decisions from Nebraska courts that said police are entitled to protection under disturbing-the-peace laws. In those cases, the courts upheld convictions in which officers were called derogatory names or confronted by angry, threatening people.
Supreme Court Judge Jeff Funke, writing for a unanimous court, said disturbing-the-peace statutes clearly apply to the police.
“Assuming, without deciding, that … a school security officer and campus supervisor is equivalent to a police officer for purposes of Lincoln’s disturbing-the-peace ordinance, we hold that a school security officer or campus supervisor may be a victim of disturbing the peace,” the judge wrote in the opinion.
In addition, the court found that the fighting student’s actions, although directed at the other student, also “threw Mahagoub’s peace and quiet into disorder, confusion, interruption, or an unsettled state.”
Assistant Public Defender Brittani Lewit said she was disappointed with the outcome. No violence was directed at the school security officer, who got in the midst of the fight because that was his job, she said.
City Attorney Jeff Kirkpatrick said the fight in a school hallway clearly disturbed the peace of other students and teachers who witnessed it. In part, the prosecutor named the security officer as the victim because it was a more efficient way of prosecuting the offense compared with listing students and teachers.
The court’s ruling says filing a disturbing-the-peace charge should be based on the circumstances of the case, not on a person’s profession, Kirkpatrick said.
“We view it as a more objective standard,” he said.
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