SAN ANTONIO – A video shared on social media that shows a Madison High School student being arrested by two North East Independent School District officers is sparking outrage.
The nearly three-minute video was initially shared on Twitter, but it didn't go viral until it was shared on Facebook, where it gained over 275,000 views and was shared over 5,700 times in less than a week.
In the video that was captured on Saturday, a freshman student is seen on the ground with two NEISD officers trying to apprehend the girl near the front entrance of the school.
After the girl appears to refuse to comply with orders from the officers to turn around, her parents are seen running up from the school’s parking lot. Her father then engages in the scuffle, and tells the officers to “leave her alone.”
In the video, the father is then seen holding his daughter while one of the NEISD officers appears to place him in a chokehold.
“During the course of her (the student) resisting arrest, two individuals arrived at the scene and began interfering. At the time, the officer did not know who these individuals were. Those individuals were later determined to be the student’s parents,” NEISD spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor told KSAT.com.
While the family claims the officers “assaulted the father and daughter,” Chancellor said the incident is just a fragment to what led of the situation.
“In this case, the video does not show the student yelling profanities and disrupting class, it does not show her shove a teacher, it does not show her avoiding police while calling her parents, and it does not show her push a police officer,” Chancellor told KSAT.com.
“The video begins after the police officer tried to place her in handcuffs and the student began kicking and hitting. During the struggle, the pair fell to the ground, where the student continued to resist arrest.”
According to the NEISD case report, officers were alerted to a student who was “asked to leave due to continued Saturday school violations.”
“As (an unidentified school administrator) continued to ask the student to leave, she became defiant and refused to gather her things and leave,” the report said. “After several minutes of refusing to follow directions, the student started cussing, using offensive and vulgar language towards me (the officer) and the entire staff working Saturday school.”
The family, who told KSAT.com they are still trying to deal with the situation, said the district isn’t “telling the full story” and claimed the staff member “grabbed (their daughter) by the arm” when she was trying to leave.
According to the report, the student pushed the responding officer and with “force pushed, passed (the officer) and made her way out of the building into the walkway, where she began fighting with (the officer) in an attempt to leave after being lawfully detained for identification purposes.”
Despite the family claiming the officers used “excessive force,” NEISD officials said the incident has been reviewed and the police chief believes that with the circumstances surrounding this event, the officer acted appropriately.
According to the report, the student was charged with resisting arrest and assault on a public servant.
The father was charged with interfering with public duties and resisting arrest.
The family told KSAT.com they have hired a lawyer and that other families have also shared their displeasure about NEISD police with them.