Dumbass High School Principal Apologies for Dumbass Tweet

The principal of North Miami Senior High School inadvertently injected himself into the racially charged national debate over police treatment of blacks with a social media comment — and apologized on Tuesday after hearing the backlash.

Cell phone footage from McKinney, Texas, caught white officer David Eric Casebolt throwing a black teenage girl to the ground, then briefly drawing his gun while responding to a call about an unruly pool party. The incident last week was just the latest in a string of encounters that have sparked charges of abusive police treatment of minorities.

North Miami Senior High Principal Alberto Iber — in a brief public post on a story on the Miami Herald’s web site — defended the officer’s response.

“He did nothing wrong,” Iber wrote in a comment that showed his Facebook picture, name, school and title. “He was afraid for his life. I commend him for his actions.”

Iber’s stance quickly prompted a passionate online response from Ambrose Sims, a black, retired Miami Beach Police veteran who joined the force at a time of racial strife in Miami in the 1980s. He also came out as gay and led a campaign for equal rights. Sims wrote, in part: “Such a comment reveals to me that you’re a serious part of the problem.”

Iber’s comment — which was removed after a few hours but not before being captured in screen grabs that were circulated in the community — also raised eyebrows in North Miami, a diverse city in northeast Miami-Dade where a majority of residents are black. The student body at his school also is 99 percent minority, according to state records.

Alix Desulme, a recently elected councilman who is Haitian-American and also a school teacher, said he was “appalled.”

“For him to make such a comment is insensitive to the community,” Desulme said.

Iber responded to a reporter’s questions on Tuesday by reading a prepared statement.

“I support law enforcement, and also the community and students that I serve as the proud principal of North Miami Senior High,’’ he said. “The comment I posted was simply made as the result of a short video that I watched and my personal opinion.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article23616994.html