2 Former Louisiana Cops Indicted for Slamming 14-Year-Old on Ground, Into Desk

And people wonder why we don’t want more police officers in schools.

Surveillance footage from October reveals two then-officers slamming a 14-year-old boy onto the ground and into a desk after he tried to walk away from administrators and out of a school office.

In the video, former Officer Anthony Dupre handles the student like a ragdoll and struggles with the minor, seemingly dropping his holstered gun in the process. Dupre fully picks up the teenager—showing a level of strength far beyond what should have allowed him to easily restrain a minor without resorting to violence—and slams him back on the ground.

Another officer, identified as Dan Cipriano, enters, and they handcuff the student before attempting to slam his face into the desk. According to ABC, the teen suffered unspecific injuries during the brutal encounter.

From ABC:

Former Brusly Police Department officers Dan Cipriano and Anthony Dupre were indicted on Friday, accused of assaulting a 14-year-old boy in October while responding to a report at Brusly Middle School in central Louisiana, according to court documents....

“[The student’s parents] feel the DA’s office did an adequate job by bringing it quickly to the people, but feel it was a slap on the wrist based on the tape and what they saw done to their grandson,” Kwame Asante, a lawyer for the student’s family, told local news outlet The Advocate on Friday. “This young man will still be dealing with this for a long time.”

A recent study has shown that police officers don’t reduce crime in schools in the first place, and while anecdotal, we’ve seen more than enough instances of police actively harming students to reconsider the way we have them in schools. We don’t need to sit around and wait for them to break a teenager’s neck before we stop these schools from policing black children instead of teaching them.