Local NAACP president says civil rights of students were violated during Las Vegas incident

By Joe Vigil

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    LAS VEGAS, Nevada (KVVU) — Quentin Savwoir, President of the Las Vegas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, says cell phone footage taken of a student being slammed to the ground is disturbing to him. And he said a public demonstration is planned for 6:00 Friday night at the Clark County District Administrative Center on Sahara.

“I don’t think you need to be a lawyer to see that civil rights have been violated. We did ask to see video footage because the CCSD officers do wear body cams. That footage will be made available to the public once the investigation is over. I will be very curious in seeing that because no one has been able to articulate why these young people were stopped. When I spoke to the parents about when they questioned the officer, one parent specifically said that the officer replied to her that he’s in handcuffs because he wouldn’t stop recording me,” said Savwoir.

Savwoir says he met with the CCSD Police Chief on Monday and says the chief told him the officer seen in the video slamming a student to the ground has been “reassigned” and is currently not in the field.

“These are kids. These are 14-year-old students who didn’t think that was going to happen to them that day. And now they’re afraid to walk home from school. They’re afraid to go to school. I don’t care what your political background or affiliations are, I think we can all agree that kids should be able to go to school and they should be safe,” said Savwoir.

He added, “More than anything I think what we truly have to examine is why there is this void of humanizing people when our law enforcement officials are involved. We saw the same thing happen just a few weeks ago in Memphis where it just seems like there is this, just sheer losing humanness when dealing with the public. And we really need to do better in examining that and figuring out how we see each other as full humans because it’s truly devastating.”

FOX5 made several attempts for comment about the incident from CCSD Police on Monday. Calls and text messages to a police spokesperson were not returned. We also asked to interview the chief, but again we did not hear back from CCSD Police.

This is what CCSD police said in a statement to FOX5 last week.

The Clark County School District Police Department is aware of an incident that was recorded involving one of our officers and a juvenile. The incident stemmed from an investigation regarding the report of a firearm near one of our schools.

We have initiated an investigation, the department will review all aspects of the interaction, including what transpired before, during, and after the recording.

As this matter is under investigation, we are unable to provide any further details at this time.

This matter is being taken seriously, as are all interactions between our officers and members of the public who we serve.

CCSD Police Department

On Monday CCSD Superintendent Jesus Jara ordered a review of CCSD police’s use of force policy and protocols.

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