Sheriff vows accountability
Deputies are seen pepper-spraying, punching teens
Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony said Friday he would launch a “thorough investigation” into deputies who are shown on video pepper-spraying, tackling and punching teens near J.P. Taravella High.
“It may take some time but we will be transparent, and if folks need to be held accountable, it shall be done,” he said in a video statement released Friday afternoon.
The statement came after some Broward County leaders demanded that the Sheriff ’s Office take disciplinary action against deputies. The Sheriff’s Office has released the name of one of the deputies involved, Christopher Krickovich, who is on restricted assignment pending the investigation.
The other deputy is Sgt. Greg LaCerra, whose status is unclear. Records show LaCerra has been with the Sheriff’s Office for 17 years, while Krickovich has served the agency six years.
The video, which has been shared through social media, shows two deputies take a boy down, bang his forehead into the pavement and repeatedly punch him in the
head. The encounter took place Thursday afternoon in Tamarac outside a McDonald’s at 8375 N. Pine Island Road, about a halfmile from the high school in Coral Springs.
Krickovich said in a police report that three officers were outnumbered by about 200 students “who were yelling, threatening us and surrounding us, I had to act quickly, fearing I would get stuck or having a student potentially grab weapons off of my belt or vest.”
Still, the aggressive response alarmed some local government officials.
School Board member Rosalind Osgood took to Twitter on Friday morning to contact the Sheriff’s Office “to demand removal of these officers.”
Broward County Mayor Mark Bogen said some form of discipline was needed. “These are deputies who are hotheads, who don’t know how to control their tempers,” Bogen said. “It was outrageous that a deputy would do this to an unarmed student who was not fighting back, who was giving no resistance.”
Bogen said the deputy who threw the student to the ground should be suspended at the very minimum and the deputy who punched the student and pushed his head into the ground should be removed.
However, one legal expert said the officers may not have done anything wrong. Fred Shenkman, a retired professor of criminal justice at the University of Florida, said it’s hard to argue police used excessive force if the teen didn’t suffer any serious injuries. The teen was taken to Coral Springs Medical Center for medical clearance before being taken to the county’s Juvenile Assessment Center, according to a police report.
“I don’t have the full video, but even videos can be two-dimensional and not quite as powerful as some people want it to be,” Shenkman said. He cautioned that his information is limited, based on an 18-second video and the police report, but he said it was a tense situation for the deputies, who may have been trying to quickly control a situation and were outnumbered and in fear of being disarmed.
“This was a fight. It wasn’t a Cub Scout meeting,” he said. “Nothing jumps out to me that’s really egregious or illegal or indefensible unless there are other elements I’m not aware of.”
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright said Thursday evening that the agency had begun “investigating the incident to determine exactly what happened, how it started, how it escalated and they’re looking at the outcome of it.”
Two teens were arrested from Thursday’s encounter, with one of them appearing in court Friday.
One boy, 15, had been held on charges that included aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest without violence. The boy’s attorney, Richard Della Fera, argued there was no evidence to support an aggravated assault charge, so the judge reduced the charge to simple assault. The boy, who has no criminal history, was released to his mom, Della Fera said.
“They were saying he should be held in secure detention, but even their allegations didn’t rise to the
level of aggravated assault,” said Della Fera, who argued that the video demonstrates his client did not pose a threat to the deputies.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel isn’t naming the 15-year-old boy because he’s a minor facing misdemeanor offenses.
The commotion erupted about 3 p.m. Thursday when deputies were called to the Tamarac McDonald’s, a popular afterschool hangout. The initial call to 911 came at 2:55 p.m. reporting that several students had gathered in the restaurant’s parking lot, Coleman-Wright said.
A follow-up call at 3:08 p.m. reported that kids were fighting, she said.
Krickovich wrote in a police report that he and LaCerra saw a fight starting but it ended before they got close enough to break it up. They also spotted a student who had been warned not to trespass at the shopping center and arrested him.
“While I was dealing with the male on the ground, I observed his phone slide to the right of me and then behind me. I observed a teen wearing a red tank top reach down and attempt to grab the male student’s phone,” Krickovich wrote.
The teen “took an aggressive stance” toward LaCerra, “bladed his body and began clenching his fists,” Krickovich wrote. At that point, one of the deputies peppersprayed and “quickly jumped on the male with the red tank top,” Krickovich wrote, saying he was fearing for his safety.
The teen’s “left arm was free and next to him, while he placed his right arm under his face. I struck the male in the right side of his head with a closed fist as a distractionary technique to free his right hand. This technique was successful and I was able to place him into handcuffs without further incident.”
Video excerpts of the encounter have been posted on social media. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the deputies wore body cameras, which may provide a fuller picture. The cellphone video that’s come out so far has sparked a public outcry.
“This is unacceptable,” Osgood tweeted. “The young man clearly had his hand by his side when he was attacked by these officers.”
School Board member Lori Alhadeff, whose district includes Taravella, said she too was alarmed by the deputies’ actions.
“I’m disappointed, saddened and shocked by the most recent actions taken by BSO,” she said. “The aggressive and excessive force shown was unnecessary and excessive. Sensitivity training and culture awareness for police is key.”
The 10th-grader who recorded the video with his cellphone said the boy who was tackled facedown on the pavement was in handcuffs and “bleeding a lot” when he was taken away in an ambulance.
“It was just crazy,” said the boy who shot the video, and whose mother did not want his name to be published. “It was very overboard. Punching him and slamming his head on the ground wasn’t necessary.”
Thursday was the last day of the school week before the Good Friday holiday.