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Media latches onto bus fight

Videotape of Florida school incidents show how images magnify an ordinary story.

By Times Staff
Published May 24, 2005

Once again, the rough side of public education in Florida has been captured on camera.

First came the videotaped handcuffing of a 5-year-old girl in St. Petersburg, which made news shows around the world last month.

Now comes footage of a 66-year-old substitute bus driver fighting with a 15-year-old boy on a school bus in Punta Gorda.

The boy and his 13-year-old brother were arrested and charged with assault on a school official, a third-degree felony. The driver, Albert Taylor, has been charged with misdemeanor battery and was suspended without pay.

Appearing Monday on NBC's Today show, Sherri Shaw, the boys' mother, questioned why her sons are charged with a felony while the driver faces a misdemeanor charge.

Both the bus fight and child handcuffing have shown the power of visual images to catapult an ordinary story into something extraordinary. Like the crying, handcuffed girl, the image of Taylor slapping the head of Mark Ernest Dickinson, 15, and grabbing him hard around the neck is being played repeatedly on news shows across the nation.

"It definitely fleshes out the story a lot more," said Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. "It substantiates everything. The video is the unblinking eye that is unbiased."

But Felling took issue with the way many news organizations were broadcasting the video: showing Taylor going after Dickinson without sound and without showing the entire episode.

"In many ways it makes it more of a one-sided story," he said. "You see a large, bulky man striking a young teenager not hearing the verbal taunting (of the teenager). Not that the verbal taunts excuse it. But they explain it."

According to Charlotte County sheriff's reports, the fight happened last Tuesday afternoon when Taylor tried to put a seat belt on 13-year-old Corey Gene Hendershot, who is Dickinson's stepbrother.

The video begins with Taylor yelling to Hendershot from the front of the bus: "Don't you tell me what to. Get up here. Get up here!" The boy refuses.

Another student says to the boy, "You're in trouble."

Taylor calls for a deputy and heads to the back of the bus. But Dickinson stands up and confronts Taylor, apparently using a profanity as the driver passes. Taylor turns and slaps the boy and grabs him around the back of the neck. The fight progresses to the back of the bus with Dickinson punching back at Taylor and Hendershot berating the driver and telling him to get off his brother.

The younger boy is heard taunting Taylor as he heads back to the front of the bus. Then Dickinson confronts Taylor again, pushing him. "Try me, try me!" the older boy shouts. "I swear to God, I'll knock those glasses off your face!"

The younger boy tells the driver he is going to jail. "Call the deputy; hurry up," he says.

Flare ups on school buses are far more common than most people know.

Pinellas County, for example, reported more than 12,000 incidents of bus misconduct in the 2003-04 school year and 668 incidents of battery on an adult in school.

Arrests are less common, though still frequent.

In the first semester of the 2004-05 school year, police conducted 679 arrests in Pinellas public schools, or about eight each day.

Had it not been for the video, the Punta Gorda incident would not have made national news, Felling said.

"TV journalism is rubber-neck news," he said, citing the heavy use of the handcuffing video, recent video of a Canadian singer who slipped while coming out to sing the national anthem, and dramatic footage of a man nearly being hit by a car along a roadside.

"News is beginning to merge with America's Funniest Videos ," Felling said. "It's no longer all the news that's fit to print. It's all the news that can be put into five seconds."

The boys' father, David Shaw, said the older teen felt like he was protecting his younger brother. The father acknowledged on Today that the boys could have been calmer on the bus, but that the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

A number listed for an Albert Taylor in the area was disconnected and he could not be reached for comment Monday.

--Times staff writer Thomas C. Tobin contributed to this report.

[Last modified May 24, 2005, 03:00:27]