Clark County School District Police Department Chief Mike Blackeye speaks during a town hall Monday, Mar. 6, 2023. The town hall was held to discuss an investigation into last month’s violent interaction between a CCSD police officer and a Black teen at Durango High School.
Thursday, April 27, 2023 | 2 a.m.
CCSD officer seen tackling Black teen in video
The ACLU of Nevada says it is unable to effectively counsel its clients — Black teenagers involved in a violent takedown by a school police officer in February outside Durango High School — if the Clark County School District doesn’t turn over the police report, body-worn camera footage and other records from that day.
In a lawsuit that the civil rights organization filed against CCSD last week, the ACLU also says the records are public documents subject to review by any member of the public.
The ACLU is suing for the records, not over alleged civil rights violations; the ACLU’s demands include the release of records that the district has also denied to news media, including the Las Vegas Sun. The ACLU is legally representing two of the Durango students, referred to in court filings as M.W. and J.T.
If there were to be a lawsuit over civil rights violations, documents the group may obtain through a process known as discovery may not necessarily be public, ACLU staff attorney Jacob Smith said in an interview.
The ACLU is relying on the Nevada Public Records Act — which Smith said gives them access to records, with a carve-out for lawyers separate from the discovery process, prior to starting any other litigation.
“It will allow us to tell our clients their rights and also determine who all was at fault during the incident that happened on Feb. 9,” Smith said.
Smith said he didn’t expect the records to reveal anything that a viral video clip hadn’t already shown — a CCSD Police officer shouting at a student apparently using his phone to record the officer detaining another student, then tackling the teen and putting his knee on the young man’s back as he lay prone in a gutter. All of the teens involved in the incident are Black.
“What we think the records are going to provide might be what CCSD did beforehand to either allow or not prevent this officer from acting so violently, or what the other officers around did,” Smith said.
According to court filings, the ACLU first informed CCSD on Feb. 17 that it was representing M.W. and J.T., ninth-graders at the southwest valley school. On Feb. 21, the organization requested records: video footage, including from the officers’ body-worn cameras; photos; witness statements; any written material such as reports and interpersonal communications; and anything describing how employees or students might have been disciplined over the incident.
On March 14, CCSD sent back a denial listing 31 statutory provisions, 16 court cases and four district regulations to justify not releasing the records, but without specifying the records of how the justifications apply, according to filings.
A week after the ACLU asked for clarification, the district responded by saying the records were part of pending juvenile justice and employment matters. One district response did, however, ask that the ACLU give consent to release documents relating to the teens, which Smith pointed out acknowledges that CCSD understands that the ACLU legally represents M.W. and J.T.
Smith, in a response to the district, said the juvenile justice matter justification is irrelevant because he is the teens’ lawyer. On March 27, the district came back with another lengthy rejection, nearly identical to its initial denial — again, citing the confidentiality of pending juvenile justice matters.
As part of its justification for not releasing the records, the district cited case law that allows confidentiality if a government entity can prove its interests outweighs that of the public. That same case law also says that if a government entity wants to deny public records, it needs to generally identify the documents and then state why each record is confidential. Attaching a list of citations is not enough.
“It is difficult to imagine a clearer example of ‘merely pinning a string of citations to a boilerplate declaration of confidentiality’ than CCSD’s responses to ACLU’s request for records,” according to the ACLU’s opening brief in support of its demand, filed Tuesday in Clark County District Court. “CCSD’s first response to all seven record types requested was, ‘confidential and privileged information is not required to be produced under the public records law.’ Following this statement were 10 generic statements of law each followed by a list of statutes, cases and regulations. With each statement, CCSD failed to in any way explain (1) what records each statement might apply to or (2) how the statements were in any way relevant to ACLU of Nevada’s requests.”
The ACLU devotes more than two pages of its 22-page brief to a grid arguing each provision the district cited in its denials, saying that “CCSD has failed to explain how any of the privileges apply to any, let alone all, of the records in its possession related to the Feb. 9 incident.”
The ACLU said the denials included provisions that would protect the confidentiality of student educational records and personal information like home addresses, proprietary computer programming and databases of email addresses and phone numbers, and a reference to federal, not state, public records laws — which the group says are irrelevant, but to the extent that any could apply, that specific information could be redacted.
Community reaction to the Durango incident was swift and in the following weeks included a demonstration outside School District headquarters, comment at a School Board meeting, and a forum with the National Action Network where
CCSDPD Chief Mike Blackeye appeared. In March, state senators called Blackeye and Superintendent Jesus Jara to Carson City to testify on use-of-force practices.
The teens’ lawyers want to know what happened, and the public does too, Smith said.
“The public’s interest in transparency regarding a use-of-force incident involving a white police officer assaulting Black school children is clear; CCSD’s adverse interest is not,” the filing said.
The School District had not filed a response in court as of Wednesday and generally does not comment on pending litigation.
