The Evansville NAACP branch is clarifying its role amid criticism that it hasn’t done enough to respond to an altercation between Evansville police and an EVSC student.
A short video posted to social media shows the student subdued by three officers after a school bus driver reportedly called police.
In the video, one officer appears to deliver repeated blows to the student’s back.
The EPD has since said its officers were following proper protocol.
In the days after the incident, NAACP Evansville Branch President Rev. Gerald Arnold met with police. Some activists have criticized how his organization has handled the situation.
Arnold stresses that he and other activists want to achieve the same goal, although they may go about it in different ways.
"We are part of a national organization," he said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. "I don’t have the independency to act on my own with regard for direct actions."
The NAACP only gets involved when someone makes a complaint.
That hasn’t happened here. Arnold says he’s reached out to the boy’s mother twice but she hasn’t responded.
Arnold says he’s still investigating the situation to make sure children are protected. He says he wants to take a deeper look into EPD policy and also wants to chat with the school district.