Chantel Rodriguez

Staff Writer

Cvr5570@psu.edu

Police officer Shawn Guetschow, shown on viral video placing his knee on the neck of a 12-year-old girl to restrain her, resigned weeks after the incident occurred on March 4 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. 

After footage released showed Guetschow holding the student’s face against the floor, positioning his right leg, and pressing his knee down into her neck, he received backlash from thousands of people from social media, which prompted him to release his statement of feeling the mental and emotional strain for his family and could no longer continue with the school district.

I hope he understands the impact of his actions. He has changed that child’s outlook on police officers or anyone in authority for the rest of her life. While he hides behind the Kenosha Police Department while still being employed on desk duty, the 12-year-old girl only referred to as “Jerrel Perez’s daughter” is traumatized by this event and humiliated. 

Her father details that he has to hear his daughter every day say she doesn’t want to go to school now because of the trauma. It’s upsetting that no lessons are learned from the past. It’s concerning that this type of restraint is still being used even after the murder of George Floyd and being used on a child, nonetheless. 

This child could have been permanently injured because he felt so strongly about using a maneuver that he claimed to be “protecting her from injuring herself.” There is no excuse to use a neck restraint on anyone, especially when you are three times bigger than the restrained person. 

Was he so in the moment of calming everyone down that he lost his sense and reacted unconsciously? Or can we blame his police training not being transferable to a school setting around children K-12? I can’t see a justifiable reason to use this technique.

Two adults broke up the two students fighting, and video and witnesses say that the girl was already under control until she was forcibly put to the ground by Officer Guetschow. 

In a press conference, Jerrel Perez, the child’s father, later said she was protecting herself from another student who was the repeat aggressor in bullying his child. The girl was only defending herself and ended up being the one hurt and even more humiliated in the end. She was failed to be protected. 

The Kenosha Police Department should take serious concern that a police officer, one of their own, would use such restraint on a child. There are other ways to control such situations when they arise, and he lost control. 

He was impulsive and left a child scarred with memories that will stick with her forever. There needs to be a change! Such force should not ever be used, especially in K-12 schools where children are present. We can only hope that her support system brings her up and, in a way, heals her from this once she receives justice for what happened to her.