Video from a school bus shows Texas police brutalizing a 15-year-old boy after an altercation with another student who bullied him because of his sexual orientation on April 21, 2016.
Footage of the incident, released today, shows Killeen cops Stephen Frucella and Travis Lundt responding, pulling the boy off the bus, banging his head in the bus entry way and body slamming the teen outside without first giving him any instructions or warning.
“I’m not resisting! I’m not resisting!” the boy can be heard trying to explain to the officers before one slams him to the ground.
The boy, a high school freshman at the time, suffered injuries, causing him to bleed from his head.
After being bullied by fellow students and then brutalized by police, he was arrested and charged with resisting arrest. But those charges were dropped in December 2016.
Frucella and Lundt responded to a call from the bus driver, but neither of them pointed their dash cams towards the bus to capture the incident.
“We see this as standard procedure more and more with police departments,” attorney Robert Ranco, who is representing the boy, told PINAC.
“They don’t want their actions to be documented on video. That’s certainly what I glean from their actions.”
The bus camera shows the bus driver pointing, telling police the student in the back of the bus started the physical altercation.
The student in the back shouts back, “that faggot started it!”
Upset after being bullied for being gay, the boy shouts he didn’t start the fight.
That’s when Frucella grabs the boy, pulls him off the bus and body slams him.
“A body slam is never an approved means of force,” Ranco said.
“These officers have never been trained to do that.”
“Every police chief I’ve ever deposed, they all say when police officers abandon their training, that’s when bad things happen.”
Ranco pointed out his client never tried to go to the back of the bus to further the altercation even though he was obviously agitated after being bullied.
He also said police never gave his client instruction before dragging him off the bus and slamming him on the ground.
“If they had any concerns he had violent propensities, they should have said ‘put your hands behind our back and get on the ground,’” Ranco explained.
“They never gave him instructions.”
“They should have used an approved method for a take down. That’s what makes it so frustrating. They know better.
Watch the video below.
