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.
Friday, June 9, 2023 | 7:39 p.m.
The Clark County School District maintains that district police records being sought by the ACLU from an incident when officers were recorded on video this spring violently detaining a Black teenager are either confidential or so voluminous that it would be a crushing burden to sort through them.
The arguments were part of a wide-ranging reply filed Friday in Clark County district court responding to the ACLU of Nevada’s lawsuit demanding the records. The civil liberties advocacy group, which is legally representing two of the students involved in the Feb. 9 after-school incident outside Durango High School, alleges that the school district violated the Nevada Public Records Act by denying them police reports, body-worn camera footage, emails and other records.
The ACLU’s lawsuit demands the release of records, including those the district has also denied to news media, including the Sun.
In its filing, the district offered a multipoint rebuttal to the ACLU’s demands:
- Body-worn camera footage and all written records, including the incident report, are confidential because they involve minors in the juvenile justice system, the filing said. One of the teens was cited and referred to the local juvenile justice system, the filing said, although it did not say what the charges were or the status of the case.
- Relatedly, the district’s lawyers wrote, ACLU needed to request the records from the juvenile justice system; so, “it is ACLU – not CCSD – that has not complied with the law.”
- An attorney-client relationship exemption does not apply to the state public records law, the filing said.
- The denials were properly explained, not simply a string of citations as the ACLU characterized them, district lawyers wrote.
- The ACLU’s request for “communications” to CCSD staff and School Board members about the incident is “significantly broad and overly burdensome” because, after a preliminary search based on how the ACLU worded its request, CCSD could have as many as 40,000 pages of emails, the filing argued. With a single employee processing public records requests, CCSD does not have the resources to sort and redact records, which it estimated would be done at a rate of 250 pages per day. That would require nearly 160 business days – about eight months – to the exclusion of any other work, they argued.
- Some of the requested records do not exist. The district does not have photographs, witness statements, related student or employee discipline records, or use of force reports, the filing said. The filing acknowledges that the officer featured in the video was put under internal investigation. But according to an attached affidavit from CCSDPD Chief Mike Blackeye, because the investigation was active at the time of both the ACLU’s request and lawsuit filing, and CCSDPD does not create employee discipline reports until the internal investigation is complete, there was no public record to disclose. The internal investigation ended on April 27. The ACLU sued on April 19.
- CCSD did not violate the state public records law, and if the court determines it did, it was not “willful,” the filing said.
The Durango incident went viral the day after it happened as a cellphone video clip picked up steam online.
The clip, which is just under a minute long, shows a uniformed CCSDPD officer walking in the street to a police vehicle, detaining a teenage boy with his hands behind his back. As he leaned the teen against the hood, another boy walked through the frame, holding out what appeared to be his phone.
The officer then followed him, and they exchanged words, which were largely inaudible over the voices of several other people, although the second teen told the officer what sounded like “don’t touch me.” Within seconds, the officer wrapped his arms around the second teen from behind and took him to the ground, pinning him in the gutter with his knees on the young man’s back.
The officer also shoved another teen who approached and yelled “back the (expletive) up” several times. All of the teens in this incident are Black.
Community response was swift. Protesters demonstrated in front of CCSD headquarters and Blackeye has spoken broadly about the case and police protocols with local civil rights leaders and Nevada lawmakers.
The chief has said that a weapons investigation preceded the Durango incident. In his affidavit connected to the Friday filing, he said that on Feb. 8, a student reportedly brandished a gun and threatened to shoot up Durango. Police investigated but did not find the suspect.
Also on Feb. 9, CCSDPD got another report about a Durango student brandishing a gun, and police were investigating that report when they “noticed juvenile males engaging in suspicious behavior on or near or around the area of Durango,” he stated.
“It is also significant that this was occurring at the same time and same place as the Feb. 8 incident,” the chief added.
Based on reasonable suspicion “that a crime had occurred or that criminal activity was reasonably afoot,” officers detained three students and cited one of them.
The affidavit does not say if the students on Feb. 9 were associated with the incident on Feb. 8.
