Disturbing footage was posted online this week of a massive San Antonio police officer throwing around a handcuffed 16-year-old girl after she "mouthed off" to him in the school"s office.
The post WATCH: Massive Cop Slams Handcuffed Teen Girl into Counter for “Mouthing Off” appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Not one, but two school cops discharged firearms in schools this week. One of the officers injured multiple students in the process and the media and school officials attempted to cover it up.
The post Kids Injured as School Cop Shoots Gun in a Class—Officials Cover It Up, Wounded Kid Blows Whistle appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Yet another video has surfaced of yet another school police officer violently taking down a child during an altercation with another student.
The post Graphic Video Shows School Cop Slam 16yo Girl Like a Rag Doll, Elbow Her in the Neck appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Parents are outraged and have filed a complaint after a school cop in Texas was seen choking and kneeing two middle school girls less than half his size.
The post Shocking Video of Cop Choking, Kneeing Middle School Girls Highlights a Disturbing Trend appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Video of a school cop slamming a high school teen to the ground was so shocking that the students became unruly and police put the school on lockdown.
The post Students Revolt, School Goes on Lockdown, As Video Shows Cop Body Slam Teen appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
A North Caroling school cop was captured on video grabbing a teenage boy by the neck and repeatedly hitting him in the face with pepper spray.
The post WATCH: School Cop Grabs Child by the Neck, Pepper Sprays Him Directly in the Face appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Police descended on an elementary school after an innocent little boy who is mute and has Down Syndrome was accused of being a terrorist.
A federal lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Children’s Law Center has finally made progress after a deputy sheriff handcuffed—and seemingly tortured—two small elementary school students who have disabilities.
In an extremely disturbing video, which TFTP reported on in 2015, school resource officer, Kenton County Deputy Sheriff Kevin Sumner, can be seen handcuffing a sobbing 8-year-old boy, referred to in court documents as S.R. The child is so small that Sumner has to lock the child’s biceps together behind his back. What makes the case even more appalling is that the child has a history of trauma and has been diagnosed with ADHD.
The other child named in the lawsuit, a girl named in the suit as L.G., was twice handcuffed in the same manner as S.R. She is a special needs student and has also been diagnosed with ADHD.
Neither child was accused of criminal conduct nor were they arrested or charged with a crime, but were being punished for behavior issues.
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According to the ACLU, the lawsuit has finally been settled despite the sheriff disgustingly standing behind his deputy’s actions.
Months of discovery showed that Deputy Sheriff Sumner had handcuffed another young plaintiff twice and had also handcuffed up to 20 other children. Nonetheless, Sheriff Charles Korzenborn of Kenton County declared, “I steadfastly stand behind Deputy Sumner.” The sheriff also said, on the record, that handcuffing children behind their backs was an acceptable practice for his deputies.
Wednesday, reported the ACLU, the court disagreed. Federal District Court Judge William O. Bertelsman found that the handcuffing of these two children was “an unconstitutional seizure and excessive force.” Judge Bertelsman also found, as a matter of law, that Kenton County is liable for the handcuffings.
READ MORE: Police Arrest Paraplegic Man For Considering Himself a Pedestrian
When did it become acceptable to treat students who misbehave or act out as if they are criminals? These were children—tiny ones—and they were treated and abused like prisoners of war.
According to the ACLU, due to the fact that this treatment is so commonplace, makes Judge Bertelsman’s decision is a significant win. Not only did the court find that the sheriff’s office was wrong, the judge reached this decision at summary judgment, issuing a decision on these issues before the case even went to trial.
At this stage, according to the ACLU the court has to give the sheriff the full benefit of the doubt — assuming that everything happened exactly as the deputy sheriff claimed. But even with this wide deference, the judge held the sheriff’s office liable and their actions unconstitutional. As Judge Bertelsman noted, even if SR swung an elbow at Officer Sumner, this “can hardly be considered a serious physical threat from an unarmed, 54-pound eight-year-old child.”
As tragic as this story sounds, it is sadly not an isolated one. Young children with disabilities often find themselves on the receiving end of police state violence while attending public school.
Colton Granito, an 8-year-old boy with autism, threw a tantrum during class. Instead of following the boy’s IEP plan, police were called. Colton was handcuffed, transported to jail, and forced to sit in a cell for hours wearing a straight jacket. He was subsequently charged with assault and sentenced to probation.
The photo below is of a 10-year-old child handcuffed, laid out on the back of a police cruiser. The boy’s name is Ryan, and he has autism. He misbehaved at school and was also arrested and treated like a criminal.
READ MORE: Cops No-Knock Raid, Stomp Necks, Destroy & Nearly Burn Down Home-- To Find Broken Pot Pipe
In September of 2014, we reported on body cam footage showing a 9-year-old special needs boy handcuffed as his father pleaded with the officer to release him.
That same month, a highly disturbing video of cops manhandling a 13-year-old autistic child as he screamed for help emerged on Facebook.
And these cases contain only autistic children. If you truly want a glimpse into the horrid effects of the police state on all school children, take a scroll through our archives, at this link.
“The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.” -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
San Antonio, TX — A particularly disturbing video of a police officer attempting to break up a schoolyard quarrel has surfaced and is shedding light on the Northside Independent School District police department for all the wrong reasons. In the video, we see a tiny child get body slammed to the ground — face-first — by the cop.
The incident happened on Monday at Rawlinson Middle School in San Antonio. The student who filmed it uploaded it to Instagram Tuesday. The brief video has sparked cries of racism as well as it shows the officer allowing the white student to walk away while brutalizing the tiny black student.
A parent found the video on Instagram Tuesday and then uploaded it to Facebook with the following description, where it went viral.
And you wonder why people are protesting the racial injustice in this country. I got this off my son’s Instagram yesterday. Notice the two kids fighting and the San Antonio police officer coming to break the fight up. He’s big enough to stop the fight between the two little kids, but he choose to aggressively man handles the little African American kids and lets the little Caucasian kid walk away. I don’t care who started it. As a adult even a protector of peace you need to make the right decision and we see what his decision was. Those are little kids!!! Me as a parent, I don’t care what color they were. I’m big enough and strong enough to stop the fight. They’re parents would’ve been mad how I did it, but it would’ve been stopped!!!
In the video, we see the officer, who is five times the size of the students and easily able to pull them apart, walk up to the black child, Charles “Cj’ Jackson, and slam him facedown on the pavement.
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According to the San Antonio Current, before the video spread on social media, Jackson’s mother allegedly got a call from Rawlinson Principal Mark Rustan, informing her that her son had been suspended for fighting with another student — he said Jackson sat on top of the other child. According to Robert Session, Jackson’s adult cousin who shared the video of Facebook, the middle schooler said that wasn’t the case. The other kid had spit on him, Jackson said, and then a cop got involved.
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“[His parents] didn’t believe him, at first,” Session told the Current. “And then they saw the video.”
Jackson’s mother allegedly went straight to Rustan’s office to get the story straight, reported the Current. She declined to talk with the Current, but Session passed along this message: “She wants me to tell you she is very upset with the officer for what he did to her son [and] the school for lying to her and not suspending the other boy.”
“No kid should be slammed like that,” Session said.
According to the Northside ISD, the officer has been with the department since 2006 and has had no disciplinary actions against him during those 11 years. He has since been placed on administrative leave.
“That video speaks volumes,” Perez said. “I would remind individuals that we are not in any way condoning his actions. They are extremely atypical of our Northside officers.”
“The Northside ISD police department and our district’s human resources department are both conducting a full investigation into this matter,” district spokesman Barry Perez said in a statement Thursday morning.
READ MORE: If You Look Up Excessive Force in the Dictionary, There Would Be a Picture of This Scene
NISD also reported the assault to Child Protective Services.
San Antonio parents, be warned, according to reports, not one but two children were assaulted this week by adults inside the Northside ISD.
Unfortunately enough, this is the second time in only a short while that a San Antonio cop has been captured on video abusing a small child.
Last year, as TFTP reported, as San Antonio ISD police officer was seen body slamming a small 12-year-old girl. She was thrown down with so much force that she was briefly knocked unconscious.
Durham, NC — Bond has been set at 2.5 million dollars for a Durham North Carolina school resource officer accused of kidnapping a child and having sexual relations with her. Deputy Christopher Kelly, 40, was charged with, Statutory Sex Offense with a Child, First Degree Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, Second Degree Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, Indecent Liberties with a Child, Sex Acts with a Student, and Second Degree Kidnapping. He is currently being held for “safe keeping” in prison.
Kelly, who was fired at the end of April as a result of the charges, was the school resource officer at Northern High School in Durham. “I think like anyone else he’s nervous, he’s scared and he’s wanting to have his day in court,” said Daniel Meier attorney for the former officer who was allegedly supposed to have been protecting the students from someone like himself.
The teenage victim’s father said Kelly approached him, and much like an Uncle/niece type of relationship wanted to mentor his daughter. “It seemed appropriate at the time,” the father said discussing the relationship with reporters from Eyewitness News 11.
As The Free Thought Project has reported on numerous occasions, pedophiles will try to befriend the family of their targeted victim in an attempt to gain their trust, only to abuse their children later. According to court documents, the sexual relationship started in July of 2016 and lasted until April of 2017.
Kelly, who’s married and has three children of his own, had been with the Durham Sheriff’s Office for four years, and was considered reliable enough, apparently, to work with high schoolers at both Hillside and Northern. But placing Kelly into the schools has now turned into a scandalous mistake if these allegations against him hold up in court.
READ MORE: Famous Anti-Gay Pastor Found Guilty on 8 Counts of Child Molestation
“I really have nothing to say to him (Kelly),” said the father as he seemingly choked back the tears and anguish.
Kelly will return to court on July 19th for his next appearance. However, if the charges against him are true and he’s found guilty, the damage to the 15-year-old’s life has already been done. She now has to live the rest of her life knowing someone, a police officer no less, robbed her of her innocence.
According to the Durham Herald-Sun;
Detectives discovered explicit photos on Kelly’s cellphone of a video “chat session” with a minor in which the girl is completely naked. An arrest warrant states Kelly did “induce and encourage a minor” to engage in sexual activity and take part in video chat sessions “in which the juvenile would perform sexual acts and/or the defendant would take part in sexual acts.”
Sheriff Mike Andrews released the following statement which reads in part;
When one of our own is accused of abusing the trust we work hard to earn, it is both disheartening and devastating to all involved. Our thoughts are with the family at the center of this ongoing investigation. The Sheriff’s Office will continue to work with the Durham County District Attorney’s Office, and we will respect the judicial system in the next phase of this process.
Kelly’s sick relationship with the victim goes back to the 2014-15 school year when he was a school resource officer at Carrington Middle School. It seems his infatuation with the victim led him to follow her to Northern High School where he served as an off-duty school resource officer even though he was permanently assigned to Hillside High.
READ MORE: Shocking Video Shows Cop Drag a 13yo Girl Around by Her Hair "Like a Piece of Meat"
Because this police officer served in three different schools, we are asking parents of children at those three schools to speak with their children about Kelly. If there are other victims out there, now’s the time to come forward. If your daughter or son was a student at Carrington Middle, Hillside High, or Northern High School, take a few moments and have that hard talk with your child about pedophiles. As statistics show it is likely that there is more than one victim.
Harrisburg, NC — Unless you’ve been under a rock lately, you may have noticed that the American police state is in full force. Particularly worrisome, however, is the growth of the police state within the school system — which is conditioning children to accept it later in life.
A senior at Hickory Ridge High School in Harrisburg, North Carolina, got a full frontal dose of the police state last week when she was threatened with arrest for an alleged violation of the school’s dress code. Now, the graduating straight-A senior, Summer, may miss out on her myriad of scholarship opportunities because, well, tyranny. She is also under a 10-day suspension and told she will not be able to attend graduation.
Although she is currently facing down tyranny at her own school, this girl’s response to the situation, her resolve, and courage in the face of injustice gives us hope for the future.
Last Wednesday, Summer donned her pretty new shirt and went to school. However, when the principal saw that she was showing too much collarbone, he stepped in.
As WCNC reports, in the suspension notice from Hickory Ridge High School, the principal and Summer apparently had an interaction where the principal told Summer to cover up with a jacket. The report states Summer responded with, “I think my shirt is fine”. The principal then told Summer that her lower back was also completely exposed, so she was still not in compliance with dress code. Summer repeats again, “My shirt is fine.”
Although Summer didn’t have a jacket, a friend offered up hers and Summer immediately put it on.
READ MORE: Residents Outraged After Watching Police Pose for Disturbing Photos by "Cops Stop Murdering" Sign
“I pulled it up, put the jacket over it, zipped up the jacket,” Summer says.
According to summer, the principal then demanded she go to another room to change. But she wondered, why, especially considering she’d already put a jacket on.
“I completely understand why a dress code is put into place but I feel like after I put on that jacket it should have been subdued,” Summer says.
Summer admits that she and the principal have had their issues over the course of her four years at Hickory Ridge. The tension had gotten so bad, that at one point, her mother had to step in and instruct school administrators to call her before taking disciplinary action against Summer. Never the less, Summer maintained a 4.4 honor roll average.
Being the principled young woman that she is, Summer explained that when the principal told her to go and change, she remained in her seat.
“They can’t take me anywhere unless my mother is called,” she says. “So I said ‘I apologize, I can’t go anywhere with you unless my mom is called.”
At this point, the situation escalated when the principal did what so many other schools do across the country — following an ominous trend — and called in the guns.
As WCNC reports, Summer says neither she nor the principal was able to reach her mother. The period ended and Summer accompanied dozens of her friends to the auditorium. Shortly after, she says the principal entered the room and ordered everyone to leave except for Summer.
“[The School Resource Officer] was within five feet of me, he had his hand on his gun. [The principal] said ‘I’m gonna give you an ultimatum. We have tried to call your mother. You either come with me to the control room to change your shirt or we will arrest you.”
READ MORE: Cops can Break In, Search, & Destroy Your Car Without Your Consent or Your Presence
Summer explained that she remained in her seat and tried once more to reach her mom.
Explaining it like a true human rights activist, Summer said, “I stayed in my seat just like a lot of role models that I have looked up to stayed in their seats. I mean, you have to stand up for what you believe in.”
For standing up for her rights, the principal then sicced the cop on Summer. As he moved in to put on the handcuffs, however, her phone rang — it was her mother.
According to WCNC, Summer went to the control room with the school administrators where she was given a 10-day suspension and ordered not to attend any senior activities, including graduation.
“It’s just sad because I worked so hard for four years to walk across that stage,” she says. “We have drug dealers walking across that stage, we have sex offenders walking across that stage and then the 4.4 student who showed her shoulders can’t.”
When Summer’s mother got the note explaining why her daughter had been suspended for 10-days and her scholastic future put in jeopardy, it said her Summer had been suspended for “insubordination.”
Summer said that the principal is still considering expelling this model student too.
“This is my life, I’m on a pre-med track,” she says. “A full ride means so much and that is on the line right now.”
East Baton Rouge, LA — Video of a schoolyard fight in Baton Rouge highlights an increasing trend across America as schools transform from learning environments to modern day childhood prison yards. The increased police presence at schools is leading to an increase in excessive force against children.
Adolescent quarrels are a frequent occurrence. As hormones rush in, children attempt to assert control over their environment as well as other children and the result can often manifest into a fight.
In the past, if a fight were to break out at school, the teachers, and in some cases the students, would rush in to pull the students apart. However, as the video below illustrates, police now take a far more violent approach.
The East Baton Rouge sheriff’s office is defending the actions of their near-300lb deputy who was caught on video body slamming an 80-lb 7th-grade child.
The deputy was responding to two children fighting as they waited for the bus. Instead of simply pulling them apart, this deputy felt it necessary to go the extra step of lifting the boy into the air and slamming him to the concrete.
“He coulda’ broke his hip, his arm, or anything,” said the mother of the child. “He was involved in a fight and was wrong for fighting, but yes, the officer was wrong for taking and slamming him on the ground. That’s not the proper way to break up a fight.”
Casey Hicks, a spokeswoman for EBRSO, told WAFB deputies sometimes need to use force to neutralize such a situation. Hicks points out the video does not show what happened just before the deputy grabbed the student, according to WAFB.
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“Rather than deploy a taser or pepper spray that may affect those around the subjects fighting, the deputy physically removed the juvenile. Had the deputy tried to physically restrain the juvenile while he was combative, he may have then been required to use additional force, which could have resulted in injury,” said Hicks.
Naturally, the police claim what happened before the video began rolling somehow justifies the deputy’s actions. However, unless the child had a weapon or was much larger and posed an actual threat, this cop’s actions were nothing short of excessive.
“They should’ve broke it up. They should’ve went and separated them and not just go tossing them about like they a bunch of rag dolls,” said the mom.
Sadly, excessive force against school children by police is becoming the norm in public schools across the country. Also, police officers are rarely held accountable for their actions against children.
As The Free Thought Project reported earlier this month, Officer Ruben De Los Santos was allowed to quietly escape accountability after video captured him body slam a small girl.
In January, Officer De Los Santos was captured on a high school student’s cell phone video slamming down a small teen half his size, Jasmin Darwin. According to witnesses and Darwin, she was trying to break up a fight between her sister and another student when Santos came up from behind her and smashed her into the ground.
Parkland, WA — An 8-year-old elementary school student involved in what would have been considered an ordinary playground fight just a decade ago, had his hands pulled behind his back and cuffed by a school resource officer — and the boy’s outraged mother is speaking out.
Amanda Bullinger told Seattle NBC affiliate KING she was summoned to Brookdale Elementary School in Parkland on Monday after her son, Ayden, scuffled with an older student who had been bullying the boy for months.
“It was like 11:15-ish that I got a call. It was the principal,” Bullinger told the station. “She said she had Ayden in the office and he had an altercation at recess.”
Bullinger drove to the school to retrieve Ayden, but had no idea what a disturbing scene awaited.
“I get there and I see a police car in the parking lot, and I said, ‘Oh this can’t be good.’ I go into the office and Ayden is sitting in a chair, hands cuffed behind his back and a police officer is holding him down like this,” she explained to KING. “And Ayden is bright red crying, freaking out.”
Not even a decade old, the understandably frightened child also struggles with sensory processing disorder, according to Bullinger, which means intense situations can cause Ayden to suffer extreme anxiety or ‘emotional meltdowns.’
According to NBC affiliate KOBI, “Federal privacy laws prohibit the school from discussing details, but a police report about the incident shows Ayden yelling ‘I’m going to kill him’ and became physically combative to the other boy.”
Bullinger noted her son had grown tired of months of bullying by the older child and the situation reached a boiling point on the school’s playground.
Thanks to the suffocating police state, what would likely have been a bitter student brawl broken up by students and teachers in the past instead saw an 8-year-old child handcuffed by an officer and forcefully restrained — as if a schoolyard fight is no longer typical childhood behavior.
READ MORE: Video of Cops Beating this Man Was So Bad, All the Officers Were Fired
“It really is one of those options of last resort, if you will,” Willie Painter, spokesman for Franklin-Pierce Schools, explained to KING.
“The use of restraint is only used when no other feasible option exists.”
Painter did not elaborate on the circumstances involving Ayden or why, specifically, ‘no other feasible option’ existed to deal with an 8-year-old but to cuff him like a violent criminal.
In fact, it’s difficult to imagine why a school resource officer would need to handcuff a small 8-year-old child at all — even if the melee turned particularly violent or vengeful, the officer could have restrained the child with assistance from another adult. Handcuffs seem like overkill — particularly considering the officer did not release Ayden’s wrists, even after he arrived in the principal’s office.
After arriving on the distressing scene, Bullinger said the resource officer escorted the terrified child to the door.
Alarmingly, the handcuffs marked and bruised Ayden’s wrists — but his mother believes the emotional wounds from being forcefully restrained will linger for some time.
KING reports:
“The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction just began collecting data in 2016. In the first 6 months of that year, only eight districts have used handcuffs on students. Franklin-Pierce is one of them.
“The other districts are Federal Way, Freeman, Highline, Kelso, Kent, Renton, and Spokane. The state information did not give clear numbers of how many cases of handcuffing happened in elementary schools.”
An increase in police presence at public schools has stirred contention for several years, as these officers have been caught treating students from elementary to high school as if they’re full grown adults.
In 2016, students were beaten, slammed to the ground and knocked unconscious, put in an ‘arm bar’ submission restraint, locked in a full nelson, assaulted for no reason, and more — and that’s only a cursory glance at what errant school cops almost got away with.
Bullinger rightly questioned the choice to handcuff a child of only eight years, asserting, “There could have been other options.”
READ MORE: Video Shows Cop Choking EMT for Advising Against Him Tasering Injured Man
There could have been, except this is what an otherwise ordinary schoolyard fight looks like in a police state.
Auburn, MI — A school resource officer at Bay City Western High and Middle School in Auburn, MI, discharged his weapon in the line of duty on Friday, Nov. 11th, at 12:30pm. But it’s not what one might think. Officer Adam Brown was reportedly in an empty room when the incident occurred. According to Michigan Live, Brown discharged his backup weapon, a .380 caliber Sig Sauer handgun, the bullet passing through a wall before striking a teacher in the neck.
Bay County Sheriff John E. Miller stated Brown’s possession of the weapon “conforms to departmental policy” and added, “he qualified with it and he was cleared by the range officer.”
Police officers must qualify at a gun range by shooting at targets with predetermined acceptable accuracy. But most police officers’ backup weapons usually never come out of their holsters, often located around the ankle. Why Brown removed his secondary weapon from his presumed ankle holster is anyone’s guess, and the police have offered few explanations. The shroud of silence has alarmed many parents, according to MI Live, who were only notified of the discharge by an automated school-delivered voicemail to their phones.
Brown is no rookie, having already logged more than 20 years with the department. There’s no question as to his competence to handle a weapon. However, the officer’s judgment is now a concern. An investigation is underway, but until concluded, Brown’s superiors are not commenting on how the incident occurred, neither are school officials. For now, they’re mum, having complied with Michigan State Police’s request not to comment.
Pauline Helmling, president of the Bay City Public Schools Board of Education, did address the officer’s discharged firearm. Helmling told reporters, “This shook all of us to the core. It was very scary. And we are so grateful that no one got hurt.” Helmling offered no details but did say, “Being that it’s still under investigation and in the hands of the Michigan State Police, we know only as much as the public knows right now.”
Jenny LaPlant, a parent, voiced her concerns. “I didn’t even know there was a police officer in this school,” she said adding, “I don’t believe it’s that bad of a school that it needs a police officer, let alone an officer with a gun. To me, they just put my kid and everybody else’s kid in harm’s way and they don’t have enough respect for us parents. They should have called a meeting, but they’re throwing it under the rug. My kid goes to that school and I do need to know what happened.”
Another parent, Kevin Cliff, addressed the school board with his concerns and stated, “They didn’t say a word.” Cliff continued, “It seems like they’re trying to cover their behinds. I think the secure mode (lockdown following the shooting) wasn’t done to make sure kids were actually safe; it was done to say they did it. That’s the only justification. It really seems they’re trying to close ranks. They’re not being forthcoming. It makes me really question if there’s more to the story.”
From what we can tell from the MI Live story, a female teacher was struck in the neck while she was instructing her class. Brown, who once was named the “Officer Of The Year,” has reportedly been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
You may have heard it said that “Guns don’t kill, people do.” Responsible gun owners are well aware that firearms simply do not discharge all by themselves. When a gun is fired, it happens because either the trigger has been pulled, or an object has struck the back of the hammer (if the gun has one), causing the firing pin to make contact with the bullet’s primer, firing the weapon. Many handguns have several safety features to prevent such unintentional discharge. So, in all likelihood, Officer Brown was handling his backup weapon, either cleaning it, or admiring its fine characteristics, and pulled the trigger. Either way, it is safe to say the firearm did not discharge while it was holstered around his ankle.
With a teacher having been struck in the neck by the officer’s bullet, many parents are questioning whether or not school resource officers are even necessary. One problem with school resource officers on campus is with what they customarily do after an incident occurs. They arrest teenagers (a great number of whom are minorities) take them to jail, and often prosecute them in the judicial system. There are innumerable instances where students have been arrested –all of which may mean the students are sometimes more likely to get an arrest record by the time they graduate high school, than they are to earn a high school diploma.
But we cannot help but look at the incident with another point of view. If a teacher accidentally discharged his/her weapon at school, striking another teacher, the teacher would subsequently be arrested. So why are police held to a lower standard? The teacher, even if he/she had a concealed carry permit, would have committed the crime of discharging a weapon in public, not to mention a ‘gun free zone,’ but when a police officer discharges his weapon in school, in the end, no arrest of the police officer will likely take place.
Galveston, TX — A Galveston Independent School District police officer, whose job was to protect students as they attended class, was arrested this week for sexually assaulting a child — possibly more than one.
Officer Victor Lee Cervantes, 30, was arrested this week after his supervisors discovered that he was having inappropriate relationships with one or more students. On Wednesday, Cervantes was charged with sexual assault of a child, two counts of improper relationship between an educator and student and online solicitation of a minor.
Apparently, his abuse was so rampant that other ISD officers noticed it and reported him to their supervisors.
According to the school superintendent, Kelli Moulton, Cervantes has been placed on administrative leave following the accusations.
Police also said that Cervantes was accused of engaging in sexual acts with at least one female child on two separate occasions. He was also caught sending sexually explicit text messages to another child, according to police.
According to the Galveston Daily News, Cervantes has since resigned and the charges are under investigation, Moulton said.
“We take this matter very seriously, and we are deeply concerned that it appears something of this nature and this seriousness has happened at one of our schools and to one of our students,” Moulton said in a news release.
Cervantes is currently in jail while being held on a bond of $35,000.
According to the Daily News, Galveston ISD board of trustees honored Cervantes for saving a student’s life during a council meeting in 2012, according to a news release on the school district’s website.
Unfortunately, school cops betraying their trust and assaulting those they are tasked with protecting is an all too common occurrence. With such a massive dependency on police in public education, this is to be expected.
As the Free Thought Project previously reported, according to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Education and published by NBC News, in the 2011-2012 school year, teachers called the cops on students a total of 31,961 times in the state of California alone, leading to 6,341 arrests.
At one California school district, in particular, East Side Union High School District in San Jose, police were called on students 1,745 times during the 2011-2012 school year. This one school called the police on students more than ten times a day!
Earlier this year, we reported on the video showing a San Antonio Independent School District police officer body slam a 12-year-old girl. In February, the Free Thought Project brought you the story of the Baltimore School cop who was seen beating a student who had done nothing wrong.
In fact, recent videos have revealed a myriad of school cops attacking unarmed students. In December, Officer Rigo Valles was cleared of any wrongdoing after grabbing a student by the neck and slamming him to the floor. In October, Richland County Deputy Ben Fields was fired after students recorded him flipping over a girl’s desk and dragging her across the floor. Oklahoma City Master Sgt. Thomas Jaha was charged with assault and battery in October as well, after repeatedly punching a student in the face for not having a hall pass.
Last November, prosecutors agreed to dismiss assault charges against Louisville Metro Police Officer Jonathan Hardin for punching a student in the face if the former officer completes anger management classes. Hardin still faces wanton endangerment, official misconduct, and assault charges for choking another student unconscious in a separate incident five days later. In separate incidents earlier this year, school cops have also been caught attacking an autistic boy, body-slamming a child, and raping nearly two dozen students.
And these are the ones the public knows about — How many more incidents, just like this one, go unreported and unpunished?
Katelynn Murphy King was tackled to the ground as she was arrested outside the gates of Wapping High School in east London on suspicion of affray and breaching the peace.
She was restrained after rowing with a 16-year-old pupil from the school who allegedly called her a “slag” before trying to kick her. King reportedly raised her hand as though to slap the other girl, but there was no physical contact between them.
The officer then came up behind King and restrained her on ground.
The footage, shot by King’s twin sister, shows her being dragged by her hair in what the family have called “unreasonable force,” even though she appears to be complying with the officer.
King’s grandmother Joan Whittaker has labeled the police officer’s actions “disgusting” and “out of proportion to the incident.”
“It was just two kids having a dispute and the policeman went too far.
“She’s not struggling, she’s compliant. She tries to get up and he just drags her like a piece of meat.
“This policeman wasn’t tackling a grown man, this was a little girl of 13. It was extreme force and it was absolutely not justified,” she added.
“I think it’s really important that the whole thing is made public. It was very excessive. I would even say that it was a borderline assault.”
The Metropolitan Police confirmed the incident has been referred to the Directorate of Professional Standards and a complaint was lodged.
