Tracey Dalzell Walsh of Courthouse News reports:
In a federal class action, students and parents accuse the Birmingham Board of Education and Police Chief of “creating a police state within the city’s public high schools” by allowing police officers to “brutalize” students “with chemical weapons,” including Mace, as a way to “enforce basic school discipline.” Schools call police to handle even “minor incidents of childish misbehavior,” and “school personnel not only watch, but sometimes even celebrate when schoolchildren are Maced,” according to the complaint. Ninety-six percent of the children in Birmingham public schools are black.
You can read the complaint at http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/12/03/PepperSchool.pdf