Video of Sultana High School pepperspraying incident sparks controversy

Last week, a videotape emerged that has challenged the version of events provided by the Hesperia Unified School District and area law enforcement agencies involving the controversial pepper spraying of over 20 African-American students at Sultana High School.



The videotape of the Oct. 23 incident, which was taken by a student, has raised eyebrows, because of what it shows, and just as importantly, what it does not.


The 90-minute video showed two uniformed police officers standing in the middle of a group of African-American students and raising their hands to pepper spray the students, at face level several times. Although portions of the videotape appeared to be missing, it shows no signs of students rioting, or engaging in a ruckus as had been described by the school district officials. The student filming the incident said several times on tape that a riot was about to happen between the “n-----s and the rednecks,” but many of the students appeared to be paying little attention to what was going on, until the pepper spraying occurred.

Afterwards, the two officers waved their arms and walked forward to disperse the students from the schoolyard.


A representative from the Hesperia Police Department had said that officers were dispatched to deal with “a problem” at the high school, and had ordered students to disperse and go to class. When the students refused, the officers then discharged pepper spray at the ground.


However, the videotape gave no indication that any of the students in the schoolyard were heading back to their classrooms or that they were ordered to disperse, until after the pepper spraying of the African-American students. School officials had said that they had rung the school bell, during the incident but it was not heard anywhere on the tape.

The videotape also showed the aftereffects of the pepper spraying as several African-American students walked away, crying and obviously in pain, and the camera was taken away from a student by police officers.

Defense Attorney Mark Blankenship, who represents many of the students who were pepper sprayed by police, was critical of the tape, particularly its missing portions. “The critical parts have been excised in my opinion,” he said.

The video camera also captured a conversation between school safety officers Robert Mosley, Ron Colvin and some of the African-American students inside a school office, along with an unidentified woman. A male student asks the officers, why they had to slam him against the wall. One of the officers identified by witnesses as Mosley said that it was fine if the student called a lawyer because he had a number of lawyers protecting him. Another officer asked several students if they were pepper sprayed and then later said that it was difficult to pinpoint the spray when pepper spraying a crowd.

In this conversation which lasted about 30 minutes, there was no sign that any medical attention was given to the students who had been pepper sprayed, even though four students were later treated at a nearby hospital for injuries suffered during the incident.


The Oct. 23 incident and its aftermath have sparked criticism and response from local activists and governmental agencies alike.

Retired Air Force Col. Ralph Smith, who heads the Concerned Citizens of Moreno Valley, filed a complaint against the Hesperia Unified School District alleging racial discrimination against the African-American students at Sultana High School. The complaint stated that the district refused or failed to protect or provide a safe environment to African-American students from verbal and physical assaults and batteries on the school ground. “The government is going to review it,” he said, adding that he has sent copies of the complaint to governmental agencies in both Washington, D.C. and Sacramento including the offices of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and State Attorney General Bill Lockyer. The members of the Black Congressional Caucus also received copies, he said. “It puts them all on notice so none of them can say I didn’t say anything,” he said.

The Department of Justice’s Community Relations Division based in Los Angeles had been contacted and had scheduled a meeting with the involved high school students and their parents on Nov. 28. Steve Figueroa, a national representative of the Mexican American Political Association was in contact with that office and said that the Community Relations Division had expressed concern that the Hesperia Unified School District had not dealt with its problems of the past or present, as it had promised the Department of Justice. The Community Relations Division’s Los Angeles office was unable to respond at press time.


Tom Miozak, a representative from the United States Attorneys office in Los Angeles said that he was not aware of any involvement in the situation by his office. “They operate quite independently from our office,” he said regarding the Community Relations Division. “They are there to put things in perspective, to alleviate tensions.”

And tensions have been high since the incident occurred as at least one African-American student had been targeted for retaliation by White students from Sultana High School.

On Nov. 5, Mercedes Jenkins, 15 was assaulted by a group of White students while walking down the street, an attack believed to have stemmed from the Oct. 23 incident. Jenkins had been one of the students who had been treated at a hospital after being pepper sprayed that day.


She had been walking down the street to her grandmother’s house when three Whites students who had driven alongside her in a pickup truck approached her.
“Are you one of the n-----s who had tried to kick us off the table?” a female White student asked Jenkins. When Jenkins asked the young woman why she wanted to know, the white woman called her a n----- and then punched her. Jenkins tried to go around her, to get away and to go find her friends.

“It’s wrong for me to be scared to walk down a street worrying about being jumped again,” she said. Finally, a woman came by, and told Jenkins she would call the police. The police dispatched an officer about an hour later, according to Jenkins.

Several other African-American students walking down the same street said they were nearly hit by the same car. They were concerned about Jenkins who was walking behind them, so they walked to one of their houses to wait for her. After Jenkins arrived and told them what had happened to her, they went back to Delores Curry’s house. Curry, who is Jenkins’ grandmother, had already called the police.

Roxanne Walker, a community relations representative from the Hesperia Police Department described the incident as a “continuation of a problem that occurred previously at the high school.” She said that Jenkins had been walking down the street and a car drove by. One girl left the vehicle and got into a “scuffle” with Jenkins. No one has been apprehended, and the victim was told to identify the perpetrator using photographs from a yearbook, Walker said.