From left, President National Action Network Robert D. Bush, former editor of the Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice Ramon Savoy and Clark County School District Police Department Chief Mike Blackeye attend 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.
Monday, March 6, 2023 | 9:18 p.m.
The chief of the Clark County School District Police Department said Monday he couldn’t get into the details of the continuing internal investigation against an officer recorded slamming a Black teen to the ground and kneeling on his back last month.
Chief Mike Blackeye met in North Las Vegas with the local chapter of the National Action Network, one of the civil rights organizations that has been vocal after the Feb. 9 after-school incident that occurred outside Durango High School, without most of the answers the crowd seemed to want to hear — especially regarding the employment status of the officer captured on a video that circulated widely on social media immediately afterward.
The officer, whom CCSDPD has not identified publicly, is on administrative duty away from the public as internal affairs reviews his conduct that day.
“For this community, nothing is acceptable except termination for that officer,” National Action Network chapter president Robert Bush told Blackeye on Monday. “I want you to tell the community why he hasn’t been terminated or why he can’t be terminated at the moment.”
The officer has due process rights under the officers’ collective bargaining agreement, Blackeye said.
Speaking generally on the discipline process, Blackeye said termination didn’t come right away, and suspension typically occurred when a termination was imminent. Suspensions without pay pending termination can happen if an officer is arrested and charged with a felony. Though the district has been tight-lipped on the investigation, it does not appear the officer has been arrested or charged.
Blackeye said repeatedly that he couldn’t detail the internal response to the incident, but he gave more context about what preceded it — police have said it was related to a weapons investigation.
More specifically, on Feb. 8, CCSDPD received a report that someone brandished a gun at a crowd of students at a fast-food restaurant just off campus after school and threatened a shooting at a Durango basketball game that night.
Though no shooting took place, more officers were on campus the next day, the day of the incident caught on video. At some point during the school day, some students told police that somebody in a car had brandished a weapon outside the school, Blackeye said.
Officers searched a car but did not find a gun.
About an hour later, the incident in the video clip took place.
Blackeye did not give details on how the teens in the video and police made contact, other than to say the video clip did not show the full interaction.
The clip, which is just under a minute long, shows a uniformed CCSDPD officer walking in the street to a police vehicle, detaining a young man with his hands behind his back. As he leaned the young man against the hood, another male walked through the frame, holding out what appeared to be his own phone.
The officer then followed him, and they exchanged words, which were largely inaudible over the voices of several other people, although the second male told the officer what sounded like “don’t touch me.” Within seconds, the officer wrapped his arms around the second male 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 a male who approached and yelled “back the (expletive) up” several times.
The community has maintained pressure on the School District since then, including with a protest Feb. 17 outside CCSD’s headquarters on Flamingo Road. Several more people came before the School Board on Feb. 23 to again demand accountability.
Longtime local journalist Ramon Savoy asked Blackeye Monday if there was bias or racism in the police department.
Blackeye replied generally yet pointedly.
“I think that exists everywhere. I know folks say that it doesn’t, but it does,” he said. “It exists in the School District. It exists in every department in the School District. It exists in this room. It’s everywhere.”
