Police Are Supposed To Be Peace Officers’

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office announced last week that sev­er­al of its deputies are under inves­ti­ga­tion in con­nec­tion with their con­duct dur­ing the arrests of two Houston-area high school foot­ball play­ers this month. Video of the inci­dent was shared on social media last week and sparked accu­sa­tions that the deputies used exces­sive force dur­ing the arrests.
According to a state­ment released by the HCSO, the depart­ment is launch­ing a probe to see if “any poli­cies and pro­ce­dures were vio­lat­ed” dur­ing the arrest.

The video, shot this month in what appeared to be a shop­ping cen­ter park­ing lot, showed offi­cers arrest­ing Seth Palumbo, a foot­ball play­er at Langham Creek High School in sub­ur­ban Houston, after he’d appar­ent­ly been called by team­mate Kristopher Willis when Willis ran out of gas, local sta­tion ABC 13 report­ed.
Willis had just left school when he ran out of gas and called his two friends to come to help him. “As my friends pulled up, I gave them the bot­tles I had so they can fill it up with gas so I can make it to the gas sta­tion,” Willis told the sta­tion. Willis stat­ed that at that time about three or four police units appeared and pulled them over. It is not clear whether Willis and Palumbo’s cars were in the road­way at this point. One video shot by a pas­sen­ger in Palumbo’s car shows a deputy pulling Palumbo out of his car. The teen is seen shout­ing that he didn’t do any­thing as the deputy is drag­ging him out the car.

In what looks like chaos, the deputy is pulling the senior around and then slam­ming him on the ground. Other deputies sur­round the car and even try to stop the arrest from being filmed by Willis, who whipped out his cell­phone to record from anoth­er angle. The one pas­sen­ger record­ing in the car is told to exit the vehi­cle before his phone is tak­en. His phone is then placed cam­era-down by the deputy, obstruct­ing any video for the remain­der of the record­ing. The deputies arrest­ed and orig­i­nal­ly charged both seniors, Willis and Palumbo, in the alter­ca­tion. They were also tak­en to jail. Willis was charged with a mis­de­meanor count of imped­ing a road­way. Palumbo faced one count of assault­ing a peace offi­cer, a felony charge. On Friday, April 14, a judge failed to find prob­a­ble cause for Palumbo’s assault charge, lead­ing to its dis­missal. In his first inter­view after the inci­dent, the young man took issue with the deputies being called “peace officers.”

“I feel like police are real­ly sup­posed to be peace offi­cers. I feel like he just did a lot of aggra­va­tion. He wasn’t real­ly try­ing to be peace­ful. I feel like we don’t need peo­ple like that in the com­mu­ni­ty,” ABC 13 report­ed Palumbo said after the judge’s deci­sion. Willis’ mis­de­meanor was not dropped, and his par­ents, an ele­men­tary school prin­ci­pal (mom) and a high school math teacher (dad) plan to take action after feel­ing out­raged by the turn of events. “I real­ly think the police should be held account­able the same way they are hold­ing my son account­able for a crime he did not com­mit,” said Kristopher Willis Sr. Willis Sr. actu­al­ly orig­i­nal­ly post­ed the videos on Facebook.

Attorney Antuan Johnson, the lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the Willis fam­i­ly, said he applauds the young men for not cow­er­ing to the badges and shut­ting off their phones. “The only rea­son we are here is that he had the courage to get out the phone and record, and by that, we were able to see what hap­pened,” Johnson said. The HCSO released a state­ment regard­ing the video and said, “After review­ing the videos, we are inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent to deter­mine if any poli­cies and pro­ce­dures were violated.”
Adding its office has tem­porar­i­ly reas­signed a deputy to a dif­fer­ent area “pend­ing the out­come of the investigation.”
“We take these mat­ters seri­ous­ly and will ensure a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed in a time­ly man­ner,” the state­ment said. “Our deputies are held to the high­est stan­dard of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and any employ­ee whose con­duct does not align with depart­men­tal poli­cies will be held account­able for their actions.”(from Yahoo news)