Community members are outraged after a video surfaced showing a student at a Los Angeles-area high school being body-slammed by a school resource officer.
The teenage girl, 16-year-old Mikaila Robinson, was thrown to the ground by an officer from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department around two weeks ago at Lancaster High School, ABC 7 reports. The footage shows the officer pinning her to the ground as he attempts to restrain her. The officer subsequently detained the girl and took her out of the school.
“What we have heard from the sheriff’s department is that my client was a ‘threat.’ What was the ‘threat’? We haven’t been told specifically,” civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom said at a news conference outside the school on Wednesday. Robinson, her mother, students, and activists gathered with Bloom as they chanted for justice and change. A community group is also demanding that the school district call off its contract with the sheriff’s department.
“I just want to say thank you,” Robinson said during the demonstration. “Thank you [to] everybody that came today.”
The attorney explained that her client says she walked up to the school resource officer to ask him why he was looking at her in a particular way and if everything was fine. The situation escalated, with sheriff’s officials saying the girl also used offensive language.
“My client says she didn’t use any foul language, it was her friend. At any rate, the foul language was not a threat,” Bloom said. “The sheriff’s deputy says she was walking away from him and that’s why he had to take her down. That is not a justification to take down a child. It is not a justification to take down an adult.”
The school district issued a statement explaining that they, along with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, are “reviewing the incident.”
Bloom is exploring her client’s choices, which include going after the district and officer with a civil suit.
“The only justification for physical violence, under the law, is if the officer or another person is being physically threatened with bodily injury or death,” she said. “A teenager simply walking away does not meet that criteria.”
