After much backlash and protesting, Vegas school officials have released the police reports and corresponding body camera footage in connection to an incident between a campus cop and a student that some saw as “another George Floyd.”
Clark County School District police Lt. Jason Elfberg is under fire after being captured in a bystander’s video pinning a Black teen on the ground. According to the body camera footage, a group of teens were watching and recording the arrest of another teen. Elfberg then approaches one bystander and grabs him to place him in handcuffs. “Hey, call my mama! I didn’t do anything!” the teen yells to his peers on the sidewalk.
In the footage, Elfberg then goes up to another teen who had their phone up recording and says “You want next dude?” The teen responds, “Don’t touch me bro,” and milliseconds later, he’s pinned up against a metal fence by the officer then swung onto the ground, under a police cruiser where Elfberg placed both of his knees on the child’s back.
As the group shouts at Elfberg to “chill out” and let the teen go, Elfberg barks back “Back the f-ck up!” in the video.
In another clip, Elfberg walks up to the first teen who was arrested and says “I can come and stop anybody I want, you understand?” Elfberg then tells the teen he got cuffed for jaywalking. The officer is also recorded telling another kid the officers were investigating a scuffle but he wasn’t sure if it was that group they were looking for. He also says there was a report of a student bringing a gun to school the day prior and threatening to “shoot the school up.”
However, no weapons were recovered from the students who were stopped, per The AP’s report. To say the least, this situation left these kids shook.
Read more from FOX 5 Vegas:
Deon Wallace says an officer told him he was jaywalking. He later told us what he thought about seeing the video of the officer becoming aggressive with his friend, the one who was taken down by the officer.
“It reminded me of the George Floyd situation, how the way he had his knee on him,” said Wallace.
Student Jacory Taylor says he was also placed in handcuffs on the scene and called it shocking seeing the officer take his friend to the ground.
“I never thought we as kids would have to go through that,” said Taylor.
The release of the body camera footage was prompted by a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. The organization demanded the school district publicly release information related to the incident. The release also comes after the Las Vegas NAACP called for Elfberg to be fired.
According to The AP’s report, he still got a job but was reassigned to “other duties” upon the pending investigation.