New York Daily News – by Joe Kemp
The family of a 13-year-old Florida boy plans to file a complaint against police after a video posted online shows a cop kicking the teen to the ground while is hands were apparently restrained behind him.
The teenager, Keven Jean Baptiste, said his legs were kicked out from under him after police were called to the Boynton Beach street where he was tossed off a school bus for refusing to close a window.
Jean Baptiste said he has asthma and opened the window because he had trouble breathing after a classmate sprayed perfume.
But the ordeal escalated after cops arrived and cuffed Jean Baptiste.
Keven Jean Baptiste (wearing a red T-shirt) said he was talking to another officer when a cop came from behind and kicked the teen to the ground.
“They said don’t speak when I was spoken to,” he told reporters, according to WSVN-TV.
The teen said he kept talking after an officer told him to be quiet when the cop suddenly “slammed me, simple as that.”
The video, recorded by a student on the bus, shows an officer approach the teen from behind before knocking him to the ground in a leg sweep. Jean Baptiste said the officer then drove him to school.
“He didn’t say anything,” he said. “He just kicked me and put me in the back of the car. He just took me to school, got my information and he left.”
The teen was not hurt, but his parents — who didn’t know about the incident until they saw the clip posted on YouTube — said they planned to file a formal complaint with the Boynton Beach Police Department on Wednesday.
“You can’t treat a kid like that,” his stepfather, Rene LaGuerre, told reporters. “He needs to be fired, you know … The police have to serve, serve and protect.”
The department said in a statement posted on its Facebook page that they placed one officer on administrative duty after they saw the video.
“We are concerned as to the initial appearance of the video,” the statement read.
“And despite the fact that we have received no formal complaints at this time, we are committed to reviewing the situation in its entirety and taking whatever action is deemed most appropriate at the conclusion of our investigation.”
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Every damned cop that was there needs to be fired for not doing something to prevent this. Every one of them. They either prevent things like this from happenening or they are accomplices.