Fairview Heights probes officer’s use of force on Black teens. Alderman calls for change.
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Fairview Heights SkyZone incident
Read the BND’s previous coverage of the incident at the Fairview Heights business.
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A Fairview Heights alderman is calling for an investigation and the suspension of a city police officer who can be seen in social media videos intervening in a fight between two teenage girls.
The male officer can be seen using his fist on the two juveniles, who are pulling at each other’s hair.
Alderman Ryan Vickers says the officer’s use of force was “inappropriate,” and that it is endemic in a police department that employs just one Black officer. The officer shown in videos using his fists is white; the fighting girls are both Black.
Fairview Heights Police confirmed the incident occurred at SkyZone, 10850 Lincoln Trail, on Saturday. Witnesses captured the events on videos they posted on social media. They appear to show a police officer, whose name the department will not provide, breaking up a fight between the two female juveniles.
Fairview Heights Public Information Officer Tim Mueller said the department is investigating the incident internally, as it does any time an officer uses force. The officer has not been placed on leave, Mueller said.
“We are aware of videos circulating of some of the activities during the melee and are investigating the conduct of the patrons and officers on scene,” according to a release issued by the Fairview Heights Police Deparment Thursday afternoon.
The release said that more than 200 patrons packed the indoor trampoline park and management asked officers to disperse the crowd. Four Fairview Heights officers were on the scene with assistance from an unspecified number of O’Fallon, Caseyville and Belleville police officers and St. Clair County Sheriff’s deputies.
“The crowd was so large several other agencies were requested to respond to lend assistance controlling and escorting juveniles away from the business,” the releases stated. “While officers were there, several fights between juveniles broke out in the parking lot and vestibule of the business.”
Four female juveniles, who will not be identified due to their ages, were taken into police custody for disorderly conduct and obstructing officers. They were later released to their parents, according to the release.
No serious injuries were reported, Mueller said.
“Inappropriate” use of force
Several videos of the incident spread throughout social media, garnering more than 4,000 views and hundreds of shares on Facebook. One viewer was Vickers, who is calling for the officer to be suspended pending the investigation.
“I’m calling for him to be suspended until we figure this out,” Vickers said. “We at least need to go through the process and have an investigation.”
Vickers said he’s talked to several mothers whose daughters were arrested following the incident who agree the amount of force that was used by the officer was inappropriate.
For Vickers, the video was hard to watch. He said it’s another example of unnecessary force being used against Black people, and in this instance young Black teens.
“They’re 12- to 14-year-old girls,” Vickers said. “At a certain point in time, we have to ask ourselves if the training is messed up.”
Call for City Council to act
Vickers said the city will continue to struggle in its response to similar situations until meaningful changes are put in place to tackle the lack of diversity in the police department.
“With this issue, you’ve got 35 officers and one Black cop and one female cop,” he said. “Do we have a force that looks like our city? One Black cop isn’t going to cut it for a town that is 45% Black.”
According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates from 2019, 32.7% of Fairview Heights residents were categorized as Black or of African decent while an additional 5.6% identify as being of two or more races and additional 2.8% Latino. The number of Black officers on the Fairview Heights Police Department could not be immediately confirmed.
That issue is especially important now, Vickers added, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020.
Vickers admits there’s no easy way to quickly add diversity to the police force. But he said at the very least, the city council could take action to mandate diversity in its hiring practices.
“It gets down to what you want to move your weight on,” Vickers said. “We can run from the issues we’ve got and say we’re a perfect city but at the end of the day Fairview’s problem isn’t potholes. We have structural issues with our police force.”
Fairview Heights Mayor Mark Kupsky’s assistant said he was unavailable for comment because he is recovering from surgery, and forwarded any requests for comment to the police department.
This story was originally published July 1, 2021 at 3:08 PM.
