The lawyer for the family of a Florida high school student who was seen in a video that a school resource officer smashed to the ground has called for the officer’s dismissal and the aggravated assault charge. A widely circulated video on social media appears to show the officer hitting the student on the ground where she stands motionless while handcuffed.
“We demand that this officer be arrested because it is unacceptable that you can do this to our children and that you are not held accountable,” lawyer Ben Crump told CBS News. “And we also want a child to be charged with aggressive assault and drumming, because Taylor was a child, he was an old man.”
The short video, which had been viewed more than 70,000 times late Tuesday night, appears to show the deputy forcibly throwing the 16-year-old girl onto a concrete walkway at Liberty County High School. ‘Osceola. Moments later, the deputy is seen marrying her while a second deputy stands beside her.
The agent has been placed on administrative leave. The superintendent of Osceola, Dra. Debra Pace told CBS News that the school district has “no comment at this time, as this is a pending investigation under the direction of the Florida police department.”
The teen is now recovering at home, where his mother, Jamesha Bracey, says he experiences headaches, blurred vision, memory loss and fatigue. Bracey said watching the video made her “upset, baffled” and “hurt.”
“No child should have to endure something like she endured. No one, period. And you have to account for it,” she said.
The officer is an employee of the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, who said Tuesday evening that he was collecting video and witness statements. The sheriff’s office also said the officer “was in the process of trying to prevent the student from fighting another student in the hallway when the deputy took her into custody. “
According to Bracey, her daughter said she had a “verbal altercation” with another student but did not fight, and only remembers “being scammed and awakened in the principal’s office.”
Bracey said the teen called from school that same day to tell her mother that a group of students planned to attack her after school. Bracey instructed his daughter to tell the dean. “And he did it because the dean called me two minutes after I hung up with her to tell me they had her in the student services and that I would prefer him to come pick her up because he didn’t want to put her back in the student population until they investigated what was going on, ”Bracey explained.
On the way to school, however, he said he received another call, this time from the assistant director who asked if an EMT had permission to check on his daughter. Bracey said he immediately asked what was going on, but was not given any explanation.
“He would not give me any information over the phone. He handed the phone to Lieutenant EMT to tell me that his vital characteristics were good and that he had no physical injuries that he could see, and he did not think he needed to go to the hospital,” he said. to say. “So I asked her again what was going on, even though I had no information. I didn’t get any information about what happened to my daughter until I got to school.”
Arriving with her husband, Bracey said she was not told her daughter had become unconscious. “My daughter is the one who told me she woke up in the office,” he said. “So it looks like something happened, which we now see in the video that has gone viral.”
“Obviously he fell unconscious just by watching the video and the fact that he remembers waking up in the director’s office,” Crump said. “It’s unacceptable for this police officer, this old man, to be able to hit this black girl on the concrete, not see her at all sensitive, but put handcuffs on her.”
The Orlando Sentinel reports that the sheriff’s office’s use of force policy says officers should use “the minimum amount of force required to perform official duties.” Crump said the video makes it clear that the policy was violated.
“We have been contacted by two other families where they said that this particular MP, this resource officer, used excessive force against their black daughters. So we demand justice,” he said.
Bracey said her next step is to take care of her daughter’s symptoms and make sure she is safe. When asked if his daughter would return to school, Bracey replied, “She won’t be back, no.”