COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – A police officer was video recorded punching a girl as he tried to break up a fight between another student at Coronado High School. The video is going viral.
The officer was trying to separate the two students when one of them punched him. The officer struck back.
A spokesperson for Colorado Springs police said, it appears “it was necessary and appropriate force to make the arrest both for his safety and theirs.”
Marie Lopez, whose daughter attends Coronado, strongly disagrees.
“I don’t know what his problem is, but if I ever see him around my daughter… [makes face at the camera],” Marie Lopez said. Lopez’s daughter is friends with both of the girls involved in the fight.
The student herself says she never meant to hit the officer.
“They say I hit him as if I had tried to hit him on purpose, as if I was trying to fight him,” Koasha Neal said. “I wasn’t trying to fight him. He got in the way of the punch.”
Neal was taken to the hospital for an evaluation after the Thursday afternoon incident, and released on the same day. She has been suspended for her role in the fight. She thinks the officer should lose his job.
But police say the officer had every right to take that action.
“When he attempted to do that [stopping the fight] they continued to fight, striking each other and him. During the altercation he did strike one of the females in the lower neck, jaw area, which ended the fight…It was necessary and appropriate force to make the arrest both for his safety and theirs,” Sgt. James Sokolik said.
Both girls have been suspended. The district is supporting the officer’s actions.
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