Parents say videos prove violent treatment of students by Cahokia High School staff
The mother of the 16-year old Cahokia High School student captured in videos that shows a security guard slamming him to the ground is calling for the guard to be fired.
Other parents of students at the school have echoed similar concerns.
Cahokia Community Unit School District 187 Assistant Superintendent Curtis McCall Jr., however, said neither the videos or the parents are telling the entire story, adding that the security guard followed district protocol and is not being punished.
Davea Wyatt said her daughter, who is also a student at the school, called her frantic with worry on Sept. 26 to report that her brother had been roughed up by a school employee.
Wyatt said a video captured by a school security camera and another taken with a cell phone shows her son being grabbed around the torso from behind, lifted into the air, and thrown to the concrete sidewalk beneath the weight of the much-larger guard who then pinned the student to the ground with his knee.
She said the confrontation started over candy she bought for her son the night before.
“He walked into the building with it in his hands,” Wyatt said. “He let them know he didn’t remember he had the candy on him and asked them if they could put it up for him until the end of the school day.”
It was then, she said, that the school principal appeared and asked that her son be removed from the school.
“The principal didn’t know what was going on, but security came over to where my son was standing and started shoving on him, pushing him into a glass window, choking him, and then he slammed him to the ground,” Wyatt said.
Wyatt says school officials will show her only parts of the school’s security camera video and won’t allow her to make a recording of it. She wants to see what happened in its entirety and is considering legal action, she said.
“That video needs to be released,” she said. “My son is a child. He never should have been mistreated like that. I don’t want another child to have to go through anything like this.
“After seeing that video, I could only walk out of that office and cry. It was horrible. That video has to be released.”
The Belleville News-Democrat submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Cahokia School District 187 attorney and administrative office on Nov. 23, asking for full footage of the incident from the school’s security cameras.
Under Illinois law, the district had five business days – until Nov. 28 – to either fulfill or deny the request. At the district’s request, the BND agreed to extend the deadline, but received a letter on Dec. 9, signed by the superintendent’s and Board of Education secretary, denying the request.
The denial argued that the video is part of the student’s record and, therefore, is exempt from FOIA disclosure. It also said releasing the video gives away the location of the security camera, which could make them targets for vandalism and more easily avoided.
“The location of the surveillance cameras could jeopardize the effectiveness of Cahokia Unit School District 187’s security system as that information could enable individuals to evade those security devices when violating the law or Board police,” the letter stated.
Wyatt saw cell phone video of the incident when it was texted to her. She provided it the BND. Three security guards can be identified in it, while the school’s edited version showed only two guards, she said.
The boy, who the BND is not naming, continues to deal with pain in his back his mother said. Wyatt said doctors have said he has injuries to three bones in his spine that will take up to two months for him to heal.
“He lays around a lot and is not doing the things he normally does,” Wyatt said. “I don’t like seeing him like that.”
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McCall said the school has a no-snack policy to keep kids from bringing illegal items into the building and to help them to stay focused in class.
Wyatt’s son was being aggressive with the security guard, McCall said, and insisted there was nothing the guard did that was in violation of school policy.
“We are not in the business of hurting children,” McCall said. “There are any number of students at the school who have come to me to say they are happy we implemented the zero tolerance policy.”
The district’s job, McCall says, is to educate the 900 students who attend the high school, get them to achieve the highest possible scores in standardized tests, and prepare them for life beyond high school.
“Without structure, learning cannot take place,” he said. “Our community is full of talent, future lawyers, doctors, scientists who need a foundation for learning. When there are distractions, this can’t happen.
“Out of 900 students, we may be speaking of only about 20 who don’t want to follow the rules.”
‘Violent and unnecessary’
But Wyatt isn’t the only parent of a Cahokia High School student who says the district’s security guards have crossed the line with their son.
Keira Gladney said the “violent and unnecessary” way her 17-year-old son was “manhandled” by the district’s adult employees led to injuries that required medical treatment.
She said she had made school officials aware of a conflict between her son and other boys and that the guards should have known to intervene before a confrontation in the school parking lot on Sept. 1 turned physical.
“My son has been into it with some little boys since he last school year,” she said. “I have been making the school aware of it. It ended up leading into this school year.”
Gladney said she had dropped her son off at school and was on her way to work when she received a call “from a security guard who told me my son wouldn’t calm down.”
According to Gladney, a 16-year old boy started the altercation with her son, but she doesn’t know why.
“The little boy swung at my son first but missed him. My son swung back and hit him. He was upset because he missed my son, but my son did not miss him,” Gladney said.
She said her son “ended up knocking the boy into the guard a little bit.”
When she returned to the school, she said she learned that her son had been taken to the office with his arms handcuffed behind his back.
When she arrived at the office “they were picking my son up off the floor. My son told me the security guard snatched the chair from under him,” Gladney said.
The boy told his mother that he was thrown into some lockers, which school officials have denied. Gladney said she believes her son was taken inside the school, away from cameras, and battered by the guards.
McCall said no such thing occurred.
Then “why did my son have bruises on his face and sides?” Gladney asked. “They had the handcuffs on so tight they cut off his blood circulation. He had red marks around his wrists.”
Gladney said she saw the incident in a video posted on Facebook and was shaken to her core. The Belleville News-Democrat has not seen the video and has not been able to identify its source.
“My son was physically assaulted by a fully grown man,” she said.
Gladney said she, too, is looking for an attorney and wants the guards who allegedly abused her son – and any who witnessed the incident without intervening – to be fired by the district.
Shocked by ‘excessive force’
Corey Dickerson, who works in private security and has two sons at Cahokia High School, said he was shocked by what he saw in the social media video involving Wyatt’s child.
He said the guards used excessive force.
“I saw aggression on that video”, Dickerson said. “The first thing we have to train ourselves for is to be able to handle our emotions. We have to look at the situation for what it is and not get personally involved or take things personally.
“We are just supposed to provide safety. We can easily become the danger. … We’re talking about a child weighing less than 170 pounds and someone weighing well over 250 pounds.”
This story was originally published December 14, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
