The Birmingham Police Department is in court this week to appeal a judge’s decision that it must create stricter guidelines around using pepper spray in schools. A federal district judge ruled in September that school-based police officers who spray kids with painful chemicals during minor incidents violate students’ rights. Police officers placed in Birmingham City Schools should get specialized training on how to work with students and create a more specific plan to clean up kids who have been pepper-sprayed, the judge said. The Southern Poverty Law Center first filed a lawsuit against the Birmingham Police Department on this issue in 2010. “The district court reached the wrong conclusions about what the Constitution requires.

Source: Huffington Post August 17, 2016 21:11 UTC