UPDATE: Officer Joshua Kehm has been fired.
“As educators, it is our responsibility to provide a safe environment for all of our students,” SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez said in a statement to Click2Houston. “We understand that situations can sometimes escalate to the point of requiring a physical response. However, in this situation we believe that the extent of the response was absolutely unwarranted.
“Additionally, the officer’s report was inconsistent with the video and it was also delayed, which is not in accordance with the general operating procedures of the police department. We want to be clear that we will not tolerate this behavior.”
Initial report: Texas officials said a school police officer has been put on administrative leave after cellphone video surfaced on social media seemingly showing him body-slamming a sixth-grade girl to the ground.
The San Antonio Independent School District said it is investigating an incident that occurred March 29 at Rhodes Middle School in which the police officer, identified by the district as Joshua Kehm, appeared to be attempting to restrain 12-year-old student Janissa Valdez before he threw her down.
Video emerged on YouTube on Tuesday seeming to show Kehm struggling to hold the girl from behind as her schoolmates called out, “Janissa! Janissa, chill!”
The officer then hurled the girl to the ground – and a loud crack can be heard as her head hit the brick pavement. The crowd gasped and then fell silent.
“Janissa! Janissa, you OK?” one student said. “She landed on her face!”
The officer handcuffed the girl, pulled her to her feet and escorted her from the area as another student reached out and gently touched her shoulder.
The school district would not release details about the student, but the girl’s mother identified her to local media as 12-year-old Janissa Valdez.
“I guess we’re still both kind of shocked,” her mother, Gloria Valdez, told the San Antonio Express-News. “We still can’t believe it happened.”
District administrators said they first learned about the video late Tuesday.
“The video is very disturbing,” district spokeswoman Leslie Price said Thursday morning in a statement to The Washington Post. “We immediately launched a formal investigation, which is being conducted by both district police and administration.”
Kehm has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
“We are working to gather all of the details around this incident to ensure that we take the appropriate action,” Price said in the statement.
Judith Browne Dianis, co-director for Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, said the Texas incident “demonstrates the urgent need to take action to remove police officers from our schools.”
“It is unconscionable for a 12-year-old student involved in a verbal altercation to be brutalized and dehumanized in this manner,” she said in a statement. “Once again, a video captured by a student offers a sobering reminder that we cannot entrust school police officers to intervene in school disciplinary matters that are best suited for trained educators and counselors.”
