A Florida deputy is on administrative leave after a physical boycott with a 17-year-old black prisoner while the teenager was sent to hospital.
Neil Pizzo, deputy of Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, has been processing an inmate who turned himself in for the past week while another inmate took a photo of him for intake, a SFS report said.
The prisoner, whose NBC News is not identifying him as a minor, had a hand in his clothing, according to an incident report and video. A report from the sheriff’s office said the teenager was charged with concealed weapons.
The teenager was asked to remove his hands from the inside of his shorts, Pizzo wrote in a report of the incident. “He said, ‘F — you, I’m cold.’ When I approached him he obeyed my verbal commands, but only said ‘I’ll kill you cracker, if we go out on the road, I’ll blow your car off, you’re not a real cop.’
According to Pizo’s report of the incident, the prisoner continued to curse, and refused to remove his hand from his clothes, but when Pizzo approached him, he quickly jumped off the table and fastened the outer strap by his sleeves.
The prisoner “quickly removed his hand from his shirt and said, ‘I’ll love you,'” Pizzo wrote. “I saw the look in his eyes and the attitude that he immediately went inside. Mr. Reed threw his fist and he knew I was going to attack. “
The video show shows Pizzo immediately pinning the teenager to the wall before pulling him to the floor and threading there.
Pizzo said the prisoner refused orders to put his hand behind his back so he hit him several times with his open hand “so as not to hurt him.” Pizzo was then able to handcuff the teenager.
The Sarasota County Sheriff did not immediately return a request for comment from NBC News, but Sheriff Tom Knight told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that he was “disappointed” by what he saw in the video.
Knight said, “We are responsible for aggravating the situation.” Was the de-escalation practice put into play there? … If a deputy tries to de-escalate and you go ahead and confront him, he will stop it from happening. What did you try to do before the physical confrontation? ”
A nurse was called in to assess the teenager, but she refused the check. He was sent to a nearby hospital for treatment of head friction.
Another deputy, who was in the room and instructed the prisoners to remove his clothes from his clothes, gave the same account of the boycott. The deputy added that the inmate tried to grab Pizzo’s throat. The video shows the inmate putting his hand around Pizzo’s neck after being tied to a wall.
Pizzo was put on administrative leave last week, according to a spokesman for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office. Has been in the deputy office for 18 years, according to records.
