Clark County Judge Orders Release of Bodycam Footage in Durango High School Incident

LAS VEGAS – A Clark County judge has ordered the Clark County School District to release bodycam footage of an incident that happened near Durango High School on February 9th. The court also ordered CCSD to release citation information, incident reports, and dispatch logs within 30 days.

The incident was captured on student cell phone video, which showed the moments during the incident when a school district police officer arrested two students. The ACLU of Nevada sued for the release of the records after CCSD claimed they were confidential. The court ruled that they are public records.

“For nearly a year, our community has been demanding the release of the bodycam footage related to the February 9 incident near Durango High School,” said ACLU of Nevada executive director Athar Haseebullah. “Every step of the way, CCSD has fought to hide these records from the public, an egregious waste of public resources. With the judge’s order today, we can finally look forward to seeing what really happened when our clients were attacked by school district police.”

Haseebullah added that the ACLU does not know what is on the body worn camera videos, but they do know that the officer involved has not been disciplined and the teens involved were never interviewed by the district.

“What we saw here was a government entity, the school district, attempting to use confidentiality rules to protect themselves and harm the very people that these privileges that are meant to help,” Haseebullah contended.

The ACLU says the district dedicated their time and resources to withholding information on the incident, refusing public information requests and mounting a costly legal battle.

“I can’t tell you on their end, but it’s definitely cost us enough time, tens of thousands of dollars along the way and this is for something that is as simple as a public record,” Haseebullah argued. “What’s really crazy it that they used public money to hire private lawyers. They are not even using their own lawyers in house to do this. They’ve hired a really expensive law firm to hide records from the same public that pays for the law firm. It is totally ridiculous.”

The ACLU of Nevada is still scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning for a status check regarding emails that may be related to the incident.

Credits: Fox5Vegas