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Officer used excessive force on North Garland High School student, mother says

A criminology expert agreed that the widely circulated video of the altercation shows the Garland police officer using excessive force.

The mother of the North Garland High School student who says a school resource officer dragged her to the floor by her hair earlier this week said the man used excessive force against her 15-year-old daughter.

A 13-second video clip showing the incident was posted to Facebook on Tuesday. In it, a Garland police officer appears to be wrestling a student on the floor before running up to a second student, grabbing her hair and dragging her to the floor.

Garland police said the video “captures the end of an incident” that included multiple large school fights and assaults happening simultaneously. An internal investigation into the officer’s actions is ongoing and he is not working at the high school until that concludes, a department spokesperson said Thursday.

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The student in the video, 15-year-old Heaven Kirk, told KXAS-TV (NBC5) there were multiple fights in the school hallway when she told an officer to get off her friend.

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“He comes at me, and he took me to the floor with his hand on my hair and throat,” Kirk told the TV station. “And I’m tussling with him because I don’t know what’s going on.”

She said she was also handcuffed and put into the back of a police car.

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Kirk’s mother, LaQuisha Kirk, to the TV station she was sick to her stomach after watching the video, adding that she believes the office used excessive force. She said she was never notified by school officials that her daughter was in police custody.

Michael B. Mitchell Jr., an assistant professor of African American studies and criminology at the College of New Jersey who graduated from a high school in Garland ISD, said he came across the clip on social media.

“As a former resident and alumnus of GISD, I was deeply disturbed,” he said. “Also, looking at this through the lens as a professor and researcher, it was heartbreaking to watch that clip.”

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Mitchell said although he knows there is more to the incident than what the short clip shows, he believes the incident is a case of excessive use of force since Kirk didn’t appear to pose a threat to public safety or the individual officer. He said Kirk did not commit a crime when she asked the officer to get off her friend.

“This points to the issue with placing or having SROs in schools or even often utilizing police officers to handle matters involving youth,” he said. “While there’s much more that we haven’t seen, I saw enough and I think in that clip it’s obvious that Heaven didn’t pose a threat and that magnitude of force was unnecessary.”

Mitchell said that although he understands the need for a public safety entity to be in schools and that people have the right to feel safe when they’re in these buildings, the presence of security personnel can have negative impacts on non-white students who are more likely to come into contact with the officers.

The impacts of an incident like this can contribute to intergenerational racial trauma, he said.

Lt. Richard Maldonado, a Garland police spokesperson, confirmed Thursday the department is continuing to investigate the incident, which includes reviewing videos from the school and body-worn cameras officers were wearing.

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