Last Updated on December 8, 2023 by BVN
S. E. Williams
Message from the editor:
On November 30, a federal judge ruled the Moreno Valley Unified School District broke the law and violated the American With Disabilities Act. It further ordered MVUSD to change its policing policy. It is believed this could be the first such ruling in the nation and could eventually change the state of policing in schools across the country.
The initials of the child in this case and his parents have been abbreviated to protect their identities.
On October 18, 2023 a federal court slapped Moreno Valley Unified School District (MVUSD) with a group of sanctions as punishment for hiding evidence.
The sanctions were in response to a federal lawsuit filed by HSRD Partners David Clay Washington and Dan Stormer, in collaboration with Disability Rights California, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, and the law firm, Barajas & Rivera APC on February 4, 2021, seeking an injunction and damages against MVUSD, former District Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora, Riverside County, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco for harm caused to the student.
The suit alleges claims of “repeatedly and violently striking and handcuffing an eleven-year-old Black student with disabilities, ” the plaintiffs affirmed in a written statement.
In 2019, 11-year-old C.B., a Black child with disabilities in the MVUSD, was tackled and handcuffed by school police officers on four separate occasions in less than four months according to the suit. Why? According to attorneys, because the child’s disability-related behaviors impeded his ability to respond to directions.
At the age of 11 years, C.B. was about four feet, eight inches tall and weighed only 70 pounds and yet in one of the incidents, officers handcuffed both his wrists and his ankles.
In a separate incident that occurred on October 8, 2019, the officers entered his classroom to investigate reports that C.B. had thrown a rock the previous day.
While being questioned by the officers, C.B. sat quietly with his head down on his desk while the officers questioned him. But, in less than 30 seconds, the officers grabbed him by his arms and shoulders, pulled him from his desk and forced him to the ground where they handcuffed him. As C.B. laid there, an officer pressed his knee into the child’s back.
The suit alleges school police officers “used excessive force and discriminated against C.B. based on his disability and race when they “violently handcuffed him multiple times on MVUSD middle school campuses.”
The suit further asserts the “defendants’ actions, inactions, policies, practices, customs, and procedures violated and continue to violate C.B.’s rights under the U.S. and California Constitutions, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and multiple state civil rights laws, in addition to several common law torts.”
In a statement released by Disability Rights California, C.B.’s father, W.B., declared, “No student should have to experience what our son endured. No police should slam a child to the ground and handcuff them when they aren’t doing anything wrong. My son had his head on his desk, being very calm, as he’d been instructed to do.”
He continued, “My son should not have had to call me from the back of the police car begging for help, while school officials where the incident occurred, didn’t even know what had happened. This disconnect exposes several serious problems. There should be better staff or therapists to help disabled children, and there should not be police at schools, especially when they abuse students that they are not trained to serve or support.”
MVUSD accused of hiding evidence
What happened to C.B. is shocking by any standards and what followed has raised an alarming red flag about the ethics of administrators and others involved within MVUSD.
According to details revealed by the legal team who report that for two years and throughout the course of discovery in this case, MVUSD avoided its legal obligation to produce documents and witnesses, “presumably because it was aware of the devastating effect the truth would have if it came to light.”
As a result, the plaintiffs’ attorneys successfully requested and were eventually granted judicial orders that levied monetary sanctions on MVUSD for its failures in this regard. But, despite these measures, attorneys claimed MVUSD continued to hide Demetrius Owens and Loniesha King, members of the MVUSD security staff who are named as defendants in the case. Both failed to appear for their depositions and even after they were ordered by the court to appear the school district claimed to have lost contact with King, while other school witnesses either “refused to appear or appeared but [claimed they] had no knowledge of the subjects for which they were called to testify.”
According to plaintiffs, the district made repeated attempts to hide the gravity of their systemic abuses of the children entrusted to their care. The coalitions tenacity eventually bore fruit and it was able to gather sufficient evidence that proved beyond all doubt that MVUSD not only authorized its school security and police to handcuff and shackle students without any regard for their disabilities, it also failed to train its school security and police about the special needs of students with disabilities.
Even further, at the school district’s direction, MVUSD staff relies on these untrained security officers when a student engages in disability-related behaviors, according to a press statement by Hadsell Stormer Renick & Dai LLP.
When the court ruled on October 18, 2023, it adopted a previous Magistrate’s ruling that chastised MVUSD for its “pattern of producing unprepared witnesses, only to withdraw them at the time of deposition, or to cancel the deposition altogether.” The Court also chastised Defendants King and Owens, declaring their “failure to follow through on their promises and comply with the court’s order has effectively concealed evidence from plaintiff to plaintiff’s prejudice.”
Students with disabilities are almost nine times more likely to be handcuffed, shackled, and referred to law enforcement than their non-disabled peers. In addition, the ACLU reports that in California, although Black and Latino boys with disabilities are 5% of the state’s students, they account for 13% of referrals to law enforcement and 15% of school arrests. The ACLU also found that Black boys with disabilities suffered an arrest rate 5 times the rate for all students.
The plaintiffs pressed the court for a summary judgment on C.B. ‘s behalf under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act, successfully arguing that it is “undisputed that MVUSD’s policies deprive disabled students of their rights under these acts.”
Although defendants filed a motion to have the case dismissed, on June 17, 2021, a federal judge disagreed, denying their motions and in the process, allowing the lawsuit to proceed.
HSRD partner David Clay Washington called the ruling “a great victory for MVUSD’s over 4,000 children with disabilities who have been disregarded and suffered violence for far too long at the hands of administrators, police officers, and security staff.”
Attorneys are now gearing up to go to trial on C.B.’s remaining claims, which include excessive force, assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent supervision.
Policing in MVUSD
MVUSD, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department (RSD), and Riverside County, partner in the operation of a discipline system that, according to the plaintiffs, discriminates against students with disabilities and Black students, including Black disabled students. Although MVUSD employs its own Campus Security Officers (CSOs) it also contracts with RSD to provide School Resource Officers (SROs) at its schools and calls on both teams of officers—identified as school police officers—to ‘respond with physical force’ to minor and/or disability-related behaviors that could be managed by teachers or administrators with less harmful methods, such as crisis intervention, de-escalation, patience, communication, and waiting, the plaintiffs assert.
A tort claim was submitted to the defendants in June 2020, that gave formal notice about the alleged harm to C.B. and sought to eliminate such discriminatory disciplinary practices going forward by replacing them with meaningful accommodations designed to protect and support all students, including those with disabilities.
Shortly after the tort claim was submitted a “Study Session” was held on July 23, 2020 to gather community input regarding the School Resource Officers (SRO) program. During this Session, the MVUSD School Board received nearly fifty public comments, with all but five urging it to abolish the SRO program and reinvest its $1.3 million-dollar budget in “mental health supports, restorative justice, culturally relevant curricula, and other non-police programming.” The Board, however, did not abolish the SRO program nor did it invest in any of the recommended alternative solutions.
The suit also demands MVUSD stop school police officers from mechanically restraining students and intervening in low level and disability-related behaviors, up to and including ordering school police officers to cease patrolling district schools. On November 30, a federal judge ordered MVUSD to change its policing policy.
“Across California, schools are eleven times more likely to subject Black children with disabilities to police than white non-disabled children. As C.B.’s experiences illustrate, MVUSD over-polices its students, particularly disabled students and Black students. Officers’ use of force against students creates a dangerous and traumatizing school environment,” said Lindsay Appell, Staff Attorney, Disability Rights California.
The race card
Although defendants filed a motion to have the case dismissed, a federal judge disagreed, denied their motions and opened the way for the lawsuit to proceed,
The judge stated in his ruling that “County Defendants set forth a bewildering argument to dismiss plaintiff’s racial discrimination claim.” The county asserted that Plaintiff is “[p]laying the race card” by alleging that he is Black and that “there are no factual allegations nor any evidence to support any race based discrimination on the part of the county defendants.”
The judge further pointed out that the county appeared to have missed paragraphs in the complaint that allege “[t]he Sheriff’s Department’s school arrest data show that Black students are more likely to be arrested and arrested for non-violent offenses than their non Black peers.”
Even after being directed to these allegations by the plaintiffs, the county defendants doubled down on their “race card” argument, according to the judge, arguing in their reply that “Plaintiff is in fact playing the race card because there are absolutely no allegations related to any county defendants that plaintiff was discriminated against, in any way, based on his race.…”
The judge disagreed and noted that although the county may disagree with these allegations, merely dismissing them as “playing the race card” is not a legal argument, noting the court expects the county defendants to address racial discrimination claims with the same rigor as any other claims, by offering legal authorities and arguments as to why they fail. Instead, he stressed, the county chose to respond with “facile jargon, which is both offensive and legally insignificant.” He advised that the county defendants must do better as he rejected their “race card” argument and their other points of contention by allowing the case to continue.
Attorneys are now preparing for trial on C.B.’s remaining claims.