Police officer slams 12-year-old girl to ground in shocking video
A San Antonio police officer has been placed on paid administrative leave after a video surfaced of the officer slamming a 12-year-old girl to the ground.
Sixth-grader Janissa Valdez is seen in the footage struggling as the officer picks her up and then drives her to the ground.
Other kids looking on can be heard asking, "Janissa are you OK," as she lies facedown on the brick sidewalk.
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According to local reports, the incident took place on March 29. The officer, Joshua Kehm, works for the San Antonio Independent School District and has been employed there since March 2015.
Video of the incident first appeared on the San Antonio citizen journalism site Ghost-0.
"You can actually hear it, her head hits the concrete and that is what hurt me the most," the girl's mother, Gloria Valdez, told KSAT 12. "I feel like if nobody does anything he can do it again, either to her or another student."
"I feel like if nobody does anything he can do it again, either to her or another student."
Her mother shared a photo with another local news outlet that allegedly showed bruising near her eye.
Janissa said the incident occurred after an altercation between her and another student.
"I was walking toward her, telling her, 'Let's go somewhere else,' because there was a lot of people," she said. "Then that's when other people came over and the officer thought we were going to fight, so that's whenever he came and did that."
A representative for the school district, spokesperson Leslie Price told KSAT 12 that the school district is fully investigating the use of force.
"It's very concerning. It's alarming to see this," Price said. "And while we want to get all the details, I want people to know that excessive force will not be tolerated in this district."
The footage is just the latest to surface nationally that has raised concerns over the use of force by police officers employed by school districts. Charges were filed against a Baltimore school police officer after video surfaced of him slapping and kicking a student earlier this year.
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Megan Specia was Mashable's Assistant Real-Time News Editor and joined the team in September 2014. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of New Hampshire after growing up in the Jersey 'burbs. She made her way to New York via a four year stopover in Dublin. Megan previously worked as a journalist and editor at Storyful in both Dublin and New York. Before all of that, though, her claim to fame was as head cake arranger and purveyor of all things sweet at Queen of Tarts cafe in Dublin, where she developed a serious addiction to macarons.
