Broward prosecutors won’t file any charges against the 15-year-old student whose head was slammed against the pavement in a forceful off-campus arrest. A cellphone video of the teen’s arrest sparked outrage across the country.
Prosecutors said Tuesday that Delucca “Lucca” Rolle, a student at J.P. Taravella High School, wouldn’t face any charge just hours after they met him and one of his attorneys, Sue-Ann Robinson. The Broward Sheriff’s Office had accused Rolle of aggravated assault against an officer, but the charge made “no sense,” Robinson said. And that was underscored by “what we can all see from the video,” she said.
Sheriff’s deputies were recorded pepper-spraying, tackling and punching teens last week outside a Tamarac McDonald’s near the school. The cellphone video shows deputies take Rolle down, with one deputy banging Rolle’s forehead into the pavement and repeatedly punching him in the head, while another deputy handcuffed him.
Rolle, one of two teens who were arrested, suffered a broken nose in the encounter, Robinson said.
Also Tuesday, Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony took the extra step of suspending two deputies involved in Rolle’s arrest, Deputy Christopher Krickovich and Sgt. Greg LaCerra. They originally had been placed on restricted assignment. “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,” Tony said.
The Broward State Attorney’s Office has begun investigating the deputies’ actions in Rolle’s arrest. While prosecutors decided not to file charges against the 15-year-old student, “the investigation of the sheriff’s deputies’ actions is ongoing,” prosecutors said in a statement.
Rolle’s family also has hired Benjamin Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney, who said he wants the deputies involved to face charges. Crump took to social media to discuss Rolle’s arrest, focusing on race: The two arrested teens are black, while all three deputies seen in the cellphone video are white.
Crump wrote on Instagram that Rolle was a teen beaten by deputies after he “picked up a cellphone that fell out of the pocket of a black boy who was being arrested.” In response, the deputies “pepper-sprayed, brutally beat, and arrested him,” Crump said.
Crump is known for representing the family of Michael Brown, a 17-year-old African-American, who was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Mo. He also represented the family of black teen Trayvon Martin, who in 2012 was killed by George Zimmerman, a white neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford.
“If the Marjory Stoneman Douglas suspect [a white former student who killed 17 people last year] can be brought in gently, unscathed, then there is another way obviously that’s being employed when they’re not arresting black and brown kids that are doing nothing,” Robinson said.
Deputy Krickovich reported that he and two fellow deputies felt surrounded, outnumbered and threatened by about 200 students on Thursday afternoon in Tamarac. He’s been informed by letter that he and a second deputy are under investigation by the Broward State Attorney’s Office for possible criminal charges, according to the deputies’ union president.
The encounter between Rolle and the deputies happened outside McDonald’s, a frequent after-school hangout spot at 8735 N. Pine Island Road.
Rolle had been arrested on charges that included aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer. But a judge last week reduced it to simple battery after defense attorney Richard Della Fera, who represented the boy in court last week, argued the child did nothing wrong, based on what was seen in the video.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel is identifying Rolle because Crump is using his name publicly to draw attention to his case. “Starting now, we will seek justice through every avenue possible for Lucca and his family,” Crump said in a prepared statement. “The actions on the video by the officers against Delucca are unconscionable.”
Sheriff’s arrest reports don’t specify the number of deputies who responded Thursday to the Tamarac Town Square Plaza, where the McDonald’s is situated.
Krickovich, Rolle’s arresting officer, wrote in his report that plaza had recurring problems of students fighting after school, and that a fight had happened April 17.
Another fight broke out the next day, that Thursday, but Krickovich couldn’t tell who had been fighting by the time he neared the group of students, he said in his report.
Krickovich and LaCerra saw a student — not Rolle — who had been warned not to trespass at the shopping center and arrested him.
“While I was dealing with the male on the ground, I observed his phone slide to the right of me and then behind me,” Krickovich wrote. “I observed a teen wearing a red tank top reach down and attempt to grab the male student’s phone.”
Rolle’s attorney said Rolle goes to the McDonald’s every day after school with his friends. After the other student was arrested, his phone fell. Robinson said a deputy kicked it and Rolle reached in to retrieve it.
”They are millennials, the phone is an appendage,” she said. That’s when he wound up pepper sprayed, taken to the ground, and his head pounded into the pavement.
In his report, Krickovich accused Rolle of taking “an aggressive stance” toward LaCerra, in which he “began clenching his fists.” At one point, Krickovich “quickly jumped on” Rolle so that he couldn’t run off, Krickovich wrote.
Krickovich said he punched the teen as a “distractionary technique,” aimed at freeing his hand so that he could be handcuffed.
The other teen, a sophomore at Taravella High, was arrested on a trespassing charge, his arrest report said. The deputy who arrested him, Francisco Perez Palacio, wasn’t reassigned, a sheriff’s spokeswoman said Tuesday.
In a meeting with some elected officials over the weekend, Sheriff Tony spoke about how the issue of race can surround use-of-force cases against black teens.
“That’s the most electrifying and dangerous situation for a law enforcement administrator to handle,” Tony said. “Any time a white deputy is involved in contact with using force on a black youth, this thing blows up.”
Tony has vowed accountability in the Tamarac case. “It may take some time, but we will be transparent,” he said last week. “And if folks need to be held accountable, it shall be done.”
The hashtag #JusticeForLucca has been trending on Twitter. A peaceful rally is planned for Saturday afternoon at Hampton Pines Park in North Lauderdale, with attendees encouraged to wear red. Rolle was wearing a red shirt on the day of his arrest. On Monday, the first day back to school after the incident, protesting students also wore red to school.
Robinson, who is Crump’s partner, said her firm will “absolutely” pursue a civil lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office.
“If we can’t appeal to their humanity to be held accountable, then there’s other ways,” she said.
Rolle “is traumatized because that’s a lot to go through and … you don’t expect someone to unleash that level of violence on you for no reason. And he’s a kid. He’s a ninth-grader. He’s 15. I think he’s still going through the shock of it and dealing with his injuries.”
She said police called his mother to get permission to treat him for the pepper spray, but didn’t attend to his nose. He went to the hospital on his own.
“The level of force based on the circumstances is unjustifiable. His head is being slammed into the concrete. It’s very tough to watch. The officers have to be held accountable.”
Staff writer Juan Ortega contributed to this report.
lhuriash@sunsentinel.com, 954-572-2008 or Twitter @LisaHuriash