The Harris County Sheriff’s Office announced last week that several of its deputies are now under investigation after the arrests of two Houston-area high school football players this month.
Video footage of the incident is surfacing on social media and folks are calling out the deputies saying they used excessive force during the arrests. According to a statement released by the HCSO, the department is launching a probe to see if “any policies and procedures were violated” during the arrest.
According to ABC 13, Seth Palumbo, is a football player at Langham Creek High School in Houston and he received a call from his teammate, Kristopher Willis when Willis ran out of gas. Willis had reportedly just left school when he ran out of gas and called his two friends to come help him out. “As my friends pulled up, I gave them the bottles I had so they can fill it up with gas so I can make it to the gas station,” Willis told the station. One video shot by a passenger in Palumbo’s car shows a deputy pulling Palumbo out of his car. The teen is seen on the video shouting that he didn’t do anything as the deputy is dragging him out the car.
Breaking: Two high school students were violently dragged out of their car and arrested in Harris County, TX. They ran out of gas and called their friends for help, instead they were surrounded by police, arrested, and charged with a crime. pic.twitter.com/9rxe2lN7ZP
— Sarmad Faiz (@move2strike) April 12, 2023
The deputy is pulling the senior around and then slamming him on the ground. Other deputies surround the car and even try to stop the arrest from being filmed by Willis, who whipped out his cellphone to record from another angle.
The one passenger recording in the car is told to exit the vehicle before his phone is taken. His phone is then placed camera-down by the deputy, obstructing any video for the remainder of the recording. The deputies arrested and originally charged both seniors, Willis and Palumbo, in the altercation. They were also taken to jail. Willis was charged with a misdemeanor count of impeding a roadway.
Palumbo faced one count of assaulting a peace officer, a felony charge. On Friday, April 14, a judge failed to find probable cause for Palumbo’s assault charge, leading to its dismissal.
In his first interview after the incident, the young man took issue with the deputies being called “peace officers.”
“I feel like police are really supposed to be peace officers. I feel like he just did a lot of aggravation. He wasn’t really trying to be peaceful. I feel like we don’t need people like that in the community,” ABC 13 reported Palumbo said after the judge’s decision.
Willis’ misdemeanor was not dropped, and his parents, an elementary school principal (mom) and a high school math teacher (dad) plan to take action after feeling outraged by the turn of events. “I really think the police should be held accountable the same way they are holding my son accountable for a crime he did not commit,” said Kristopher Willis Sr.