{"id":230581,"date":"2016-03-10T14:02:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T14:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=230581"},"modified":"2016-03-10T14:02:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T14:02:48","slug":"baltimore-school-police-officers-face-felony-charges-assaulting-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/baltimore-school-police-officers-face-felony-charges-assaulting-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore school police officers face felony charges for assaulting student"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via WSWS<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Nick Barrickman<\/h5>\n

Baltimore City Schools police officers Anthony Spence, 44, and Saverna Bias, 53, face felony assault charges after a cell phone video emerged last week showing them assaulting a student on the stairs of REACH! Partnership Academy, where both officers were on duty. The video<\/a>, taken by a witness, shows Spence slapping and kicking an unnamed youth as Bias stands by, not bothering to stop the attack.<\/p>\n

School officials initially sought to play down the assault, alleging that the \u201cyoung man,\u201d who is obviously school-aged, was not a student and had been trespassing on the campus. According to Mike Davey, Spence\u2019s attorney, an altercation ensued between the officer and the youth which led to the slapping incident caught on film. On Friday, after meetings with the boy\u2019s family and attorneys, officials were forced to admit that the youth, whose name has not been released, was \u201cbelieved to be a student on the school\u2019s roster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were trying to find anything they could to point the finger at the victim,\u201d stated Charles Gilman, an attorney for the boy\u2019s family. According to attorney Lauren Geisser, who spoke to the Baltimore Sun<\/em>, injuries sustained to the youth\u2019s face and ribs required a trip to the hospital after the incident.<\/p>\n

Eyewitness accounts cited in the court filings stated that Bias had encouraged Spence\u2019s violent actions, proclaiming \u201cyou need to smack him [the student] because he\u2019s got too much mouth.\u201d Spence has been charged with second-degree assault, second-degree child abuse by a custodian as well as misconduct while in office, while Bias received charges for second-degree assault and misconduct in office as well. School Police Chief Marshall Goodwin and both of the officers involved have been placed on leave due to the incident, while Spence and Bias face arraignment in early April.<\/p>\n

Baltimore\u2019s municipal police department, which is separate from the school district\u2019s officers, has announced that it will conduct a criminal investigation of the incident. This has occurred while the municipal police force is under federal investigation for its conduct relating to the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a Baltimore man who died after being given a \u201crough ride\u201d in the back of a police wagon. Gray\u2019s death resulted in mass protests against police brutality in the city, which the state\u2019s National Guard was called in to suppress and during which a citywide curfew was declared.<\/p>\n

Baltimore city officials immediately went into damage control after the latest assault became public. Democratic Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake declared the officers\u2019 actions were \u201cappalling,\u201d raising \u201csignificant concerns.\u201d Schools CEO Gregory Thornton said he was \u201ccompletely appalled and disappointed\u201d by the video. Baltimore city schools spokeswoman Edie House Foster stated Spence\u2019s behavior was \u201cabsolutely appalling\u201d and \u201cis not how our police interact with students, administrators or anyone in our school communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officer Spence had been involved in a number of violent altercations prior to the March 1 assault at REACH!, including a tasering incident of a construction worker in 2003 which led to his being fired by the city\u2019s sheriff\u2019s department. In 2011, Spence\u2019s girlfriend at the time requested a restraining order against the officer after he physically assaulted her during an argument.<\/p>\n

The city of Baltimore is wracked by an epidemic of police brutality. According to the Baltimore Sun,<\/em> from 2011 to 2014 the city was forced to pay over $5.7 million in restitution for cases stemming from police misconduct. In 2005, as a product of then-Democratic Mayor Martin O\u2019Malley\u2019s \u201czero tolerance policing\u201d policy, the city reported over 108,000 people, roughly a sixth of Baltimore\u2019s population, had been arrested during the course of the year.<\/p>\n

In October, Baltimore schools resource officer Lakisha Pulley pleaded guilty to three charges of second-degree assault stemming from a 2014 attack in which an officer clubbed three students with a baton, requiring one to receive stitches. In 2014, Baltimore officials enacted a curfew law<\/a> for youth under the age of 14, requiring parents of children caught outside after 9:00 pm on weekdays to pay a fine of up to $500. Since 2012, the city has cut over $6 million from after-school programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that goes on far too much, the only thing different about this time is that the beating was caught on camera,\u201d said Antoine Harris, a Baltimore parent who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site<\/em> about the incident. \u201cYou can tell by the officer\u2019s behavior that he was very comfortable doing what he did, he didn\u2019t even seem to mind being filmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continuing, Harris stated, \u201cThe one thing taught to kids in these schools [like REACH! Partnership] is to obey authority, even more so than learning an education. The only thing different about this time is that the \u2018political correctness police\u2019 in the media have picked up on the video, so now the city officials are making these statements so that things will quiet down and go back to the status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

With more than 85,000 students, the Baltimore public school system is the state\u2019s largest. Eighty-four percent of students in the city\u2019s public schools are classified as \u201clow income\u201d and eligible for free lunches according to city statistics. A 2014 study released by Johns Hopkins University reports that, in contrast to groups of teenagers from New Delhi, Johannesburg, Shanghai and Ibadan, Nigeria, youth in Baltimore \u201cappear to experience the most severe health consequences\u201d stemming from poverty.<\/p>\n

The police assault on an unnamed youth comes as the trials for the six Baltimore police officers responsible for the death of Freddie Gray continue. On Tuesday, Maryland\u2019s Court of Appeals ruled that Baltimore police officer William G. Porter, the only officer to have yet seen a trial, can be compelled to testify against all five other officers in the case. In December, Porter\u2019s case resulted in a mistrial, which forced prosecutors to place the other trials on hold while Porter was compelled to turn state\u2019s witness. According to a Washington Post<\/em> investigation<\/a> released last year, out of the police-involved killings which occurred from 2005 to 2015, only 54 officers have ever been charged and even fewer have been found guilty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via WSWS. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license. Nick Barrickman Baltimore City Schools police officers Anthony Spence, 44, and Saverna Bias, 53, face felony assault charges after a cell phone video emerged last week showing them assaulting a student on the stairs of REACH! Partnership Academy, where both officers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-230581","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}