Police union objects to SC high school summer reading list over books on police brutality

A South Carolina police union has objected to a book on police brutality being included on a high school’s summer reading list.

The Fraternal Order of Police Tri-County Lodge No. 3 challenged the inclusion of Angie Thomas’s critically acclaimed novel “The Hate U Give,” for the ninth grade class at Wando High School in Mount Pleasant, S.C., referring to the book as “almost an indoctrination of distrust of police,” The Guardian reported on Tuesday.

“The Hate U Give” is a novel that follows a black teenager after she witnesses the police shooting of her unarmed best friend.

The police union was also upset by the addition by Brendan Kiely’s “All American Boys,” a novel which follows another teenager who tries to overcome his distrust of police officers after he was beaten by a cop for being wrongly suspected of shoplifting. 

{mosads}John Blackmon, president of the police union, told News2 that the union “received an influx of tremendous outrage at the selections by this reading list” from people who questioned why Wando High chose to “focus half of their effort on negativity towards the police” instead of the many other available “socio-economic topics.” 

“Freshmen, they’re at the age where their interactions with law enforcement have been very minimal. They’re not driving yet, they haven’t been stopped for speeding, they don’t have these type of interactions,” Blackmon continued. “This is … almost an indoctrination of distrust of police and we’ve got to put a stop to that.”

Dr. Sherry Eppelsheimer, the head teacher at the South Carolina school, said in a statement to the Guardian that the school committee will review the list of books and take into account the perspectives of those who filed complaints before reporting to the school superintendent, who will make the final decision.

Author Hari Kunzru supported the inclusion of the two books, tweeting:

Call me a rabid leftist but I don’t think police unions should be weighing in on high school reading lists https://t.co/ZU6zWp42V8

— Hari Kunzru (@harikunzru) June 30, 2018

Author Neil Gaiman also said he doesn’t believe “book-judging is a legitimate part of the business of policing.”

“Local police union leader John Blackmon claims that they are only responding to the public reaching out to them to complain about the reading list,” Gaiman added. “Because when people don’t like the books their kids are asked to read, they call the police.”