After body slamming, pepper spraying and ramming the face of a 15-year-old into the pavement, Florida deputies filed bogus charges against the boy, civil rights attorney Ben Crump alleged Thursday.
The charges – which prosecutors have now said they won’t pursue, though Crump said he hasn’t seen that in writing – were part of a “conspiracy to cover up and to justify this reprehensible abuse to this unarmed child,” Crump said.
Sgt. Gregory LaCerra and Deputy Christopher Krickovich, who were suspended pending an internal investigation, have said in a police report that Delucca Rolle balled his fists as if to fight them and resisted arrest.
Crump appeared with Delucca’s mother, Clantina, and about two dozen others, including lawyers, activists, a school board official and a former police chief for the school system at a news conference to demand justice in the April 18 arrest.
“We never felt that Delucca Rolle should’ve been charged with anything in the first place,” Crump said. “The only individuals that assaulted and battered anybody were the Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies.”
He called the officers involved in the arrest “thugs” and said, “They were not acting like responsible professionals with proper training.”
CNN’s attempts to reach the Broward Sheriff’s Office were not immediately successful.
Punching was a ‘distractionary technique,’ deputy says
LaCerra and Krickovich were patrolling a strip mall in Tamarac last week because of previous problems with fighting at the plaza, Krickovich said in a police report. They came on the scene after one such fight, he wrote, and attempted to detain a teen because he was trespassing.
As they arrested the teen, according to Krickovich’s account, Delucca tried to pick up a phone belonging to the teen being detained. When Krickovich told Delucca to stay back, he “bladed his body and began clenching his fist,” so LaCerra pepper sprayed him, the deputy wrote.
A crowd of about 200 students began “converging” on the officers, shouting threats, so he pushed Delucca to the ground and put his full weight on him so he wouldn’t try to flee or fight.
“I had to act quickly, fearing I would get struck or having a student potentially grab weapons off my belt or vest,” Krickovich wrote, adding he punched Delucca in the head “as a distractionary technique to free his right hand” from under his face.
Video from the incident shows a deputy pepper spray Delucca. As the boy walks away, face in his hands, the deputy body slams him. Another deputy gets on the teen’s back, slams his face into the pavement and punches him in the head, the video shows.
Bystanders can be heard yelling, “What are you doing?”
“He’s bleeding,” one says.
His mother said Thursday that when she saw the video she was shocked and heartbroken.
“An anxiety attack hit me. I couldn’t even breathe. I had to hold my chest,” Clantina Rolle said. “They’re hurting him like he’s an animal.”
Son suffered a fractured nose, mom says
Recounting her side of the story, Rolle told reporters, “I want to thank God that my son is alive, that they didn’t call me and tell me he was dead.”
On April 18, she said, a deputy, who she didn’t name, called and told her Delucca was at the hospital and was under arrest after hitting the deputy’s partner. It seemed out of character for her son, she told the deputy, and she didn’t believe he could do such a thing.
The officer yelled at her, asking if she was calling him a liar, she said.
Then, despite the deputy telling her she could pick up Delucca after he’d been processed, the Juvenile Assessment Center told her that her son wouldn’t be released because “the points are too high” for the charges leveled against him. He had to stay overnight, she said she was told.
Delucca was initially charged with assault on an officer, resisting arrest and trespassing, but the Broward State Attorney’s Office said Tuesday after meeting with the teen and his family, it would not pursue the charges.
When Clantina Rolle picked up her son the day after his arrest, Delucca told her that the hospital staff had merely washed his eye, providing no further treatment. She took him back to the hospital for X-rays and only then did she learn Delucca had suffered a fractured nose and head and shoulder injuries, she recalled, breaking into tears.
Crump said the family believes Delucca may also be suffering from post-trauamtic stress disorder. His mother can’t get him to talk about the incident, she said.
“He’s trying to block it out every time I bring it up. He said, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to talk about it.’”
‘Your son is a good kid’
Delucca has never been in trouble with police, Crump said. Broward County Public Schools board member Rosalind Osgood told Clantina that many students have confirmed her son is not confrontational.
“Your son is a good kid,” Osgood said, as the mother dabbed her cheeks with tissues.
Osgood apologized for what she saw on the video, which she characterized as deputies treating the arrest “like it’s a wrestling match, like they’re having a tag team, all-out war on our children.”
Marsha Ellison, president of the Ft. Lauderdale/Broward County chapter of the NAACP, expressed doubt that the police investigation would yield justice for Delucca but demanded it be finished expeditiously, preferably within 45 days.
She also urged the sheriff to make sure “the discipline goes much farther than a paid vacation, and on to termination.”
“The video tells the whole story,” Crump added. “Thank God those children had their cell phone videos out.”
He declined to say whether he intended to file a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office. Justice for Delucca is his priority at this point, he said.
The Broward State Attorney’s Office said earlier this week its investigation into the “sheriff’s deputies’ actions is ongoing.”
“As we continue to gather information in our internal investigation, I have decided to change the deputies’ status from restricted administrative assignment to a suspended status as our investigation continues,” said Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony, who was appointed to the post about three months ago.
LaCerra and Krickovich were ordered to surrender police identification and police-issued weapons, the sheriff’s office said. Authorities launched an internal affairs investigation after the video surfaced.
CNN’s Nicole Chavez, Jamiel Lynch and Amir Vera contributed to this report.