Less than a week after a video capturing San Antonio Independent School District Police Officer Joshua Kehm body-slamming a 12-year-old Rhodes Middle School student went viral, district officials have fired the officer.
His termination was “effective immediately,” according to a new release sent out by the district on Monday.
The physical altercation occurred on Tuesday, March 29, but the video was posted on YouTube by local blog Ghost-0 on Tuesday, April 5. SAISD officials found out about the video late Wednesday night.
“As educators, it is our responsibility to provide a safe environment for all of our students,” stated SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez in a news release. “We understand that situations can sometimes escalate to the point of requiring a physical response; however, in this situation we believe that the extent of the response was absolutely unwarranted. Additionally, the officer’s report was inconsistent with the video and it was also delayed, which is not in accordance with the general operating procedures of the police department. We want to be clear that we will not tolerate this behavior.”
SAISD has enlisted the help of the Texas Rangers of the state’s Department of Public Safety to investigate the circumstances and context surrounding the 33-second video – what happened before and after Kehm picked up a struggling Janissa Valdez from behind and threw her to the ground. Valdez was suspended for three days and it’s still unclear what prompted the officer’s actions. He has been a district officer since March 2015 and placed on leave last week. The investigation will determine if more action is required by the district, officials said.
“We recognize the high level of emotion generated by this incident, and we want to ensure the public’s trust in this investigation, that it is being conducted without any perception of bias,” Martinez stated.
The story has been picked up by dozens of local and national news outlets. The video had about 5,000 views on Thursday, April 7. At time of publication on Monday afternoon, the video had been watched well over 2 million times.
“We know that this incident does not define our district police department, which is dedicated to serving and protecting our school community,” Martinez stated. “We all want to make sure this kind of incident does not occur again, and we will seek to identify areas where improvement may be needed.”
District officials were not immediately available for further comment on Monday afternoon.
Top image: A screen shot of a video posted by Ghost-0 supposedly captured by a Rhodes Middle School student that shows SAISD Police Officer Joshua Kehm body-slamming student Janissa Valdez on March 29, 2016.
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I hope they also fire those students for fighting.
No photos or story about the “victim” flaunting her cash after doing an interview with Good Morning America?
Thank God.
It’s not assault charges, but it’s something.
He should be prosecuted and his file should reflect why he was fired so he can’t be hired in any other jurisdiction.
And queue up the wrongful dismissal lawsuit in 3,2,1….
I guarantee he gets his job back with back pay.
The cop was just doing his job…to restraint someone who resisted an arrest. So, the cop lost his job because he was doing his job. This can’t keep going on, or they can’t recruit “real” cops to protect us. I led a few cub scout tours at the police stations and almost all cops I encountered are wonderful. One lost his life for doing his job. I bet they can read people really quick when your life depends on it. I also find that people who don’t like cops are usually the troublemakers.
And the administrative staff who supervised him and made excuses for his behavior to the family afterwards until the video went viral? What are they facing? This is a larger issue of a culture of violence in the school.
I can see this happening more often…
My biggest problem with this video was that everyone was judging the officer from a 10-second clip, with literally zero context. Now we have more context, and the details about how he reported the incident do not favor the officer and make me much more comfortable with the decision to let him go.
All that being said, we have no report on what discipline the student received? She put herself in the media but we aren’t covering that side of the incident. No matter what the officer did, the student violated a major contract that we all agree upon when we invite officers to enforce thousands of laws – you must comply with everything an officer commands. Fighting an officer should be reserved for public complaints and the courts, unless there is case of extreme abuse (i.e. if an officer is raping someone, yes, fight back). I don’t think this incident qualifies as such, and I don’t think it’s right for students and young people to think it’s ok to not comply with an officer – a disturbing, growing trend.
And if you aren’t ok with that contract (I’m not in many cases), we need to seriously discuss how we are going to limit the situations where officers are involved. Not much discussion happening there (i.e. legalizing drugs, removing minor traffic laws, removing officers from schools, etc.). We’re too focused on firing individual officers over specific incidents but not looking for real solutions that can actually decrease the violence between citizens and our police.