A Florida police officer reportedly broke a 14-year-old girl's arm because she wouldn't give him her phone.
According to the Broward Palm Beach Times, Greenacres Police Officer Jared Nash injured the John I. Leonard High School student while he was trying to seize her smartphone, which he believed contained video footage of other students fighting:
The incident happened at the John I. Leonard High School in the Palm Beach County suburb on October 21. According to the arrest report for the girl, whose name is being withheld by New Times because she is a minor, Nash believed she had video evidence on her phone of a fight that occurred at the school. The officer attempted to speak to the girl, but she was speaking to her mother and refused to talk to him.
Nash's police report maintains that he got physical with the girl because she didn't follow his orders:
I told [her] to put the phone down, but she continued to talk on it, Nash writes in the report.
The officer then claims that as the girl began walking away, she raised her arm to his stomach level and pushed him back.
When she did this I took a hold of her left arm, he writes. Because Nash believed the girl had evidence of a high school fight on her phone, he ordered her to stop, but he says she refused.
[She] then began to twist and pull her arm around in an increased physical level trying to pull away, Nash claims. I then tried placing [her] left hand behind her back to secure her in handcuffs due to her pushing me, her increasing attempts to break away from my grasp, and continuing to try hand the phone to [her friend] despite my orders not to.
The girl's father says that in Nash's haste to get her phone, he broke her arm—a fact confirmed by X-Rays. The Times reports that an internal affairs investigation into the matter continues.
[via Broward Palm Beach Times]
