The police body camera footage of a Jersey City parent being arrested at a board of education meeting last month sheds additional light on what occurred during the controversial incident.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
Emily Pecot, a member of Parents United for Special Education Reform, was walked out of the May 21st BOE meeting in handcuffs for allegedly disrupting the public session by repeating yelling out from the audience.
“We’re having a little bit of a problem with the rebuttal, the superintendent and one of the parents got into it. They explained to them that they have to lower their tone, if not they’re gonna have to leave,” BOE Director of Security Rhuddell Snelling tells Jersey City Police Officer Jocelyn Ocasio.
“So then they escalated it to ask a lady to leave, she said she’s not leaving, I said I’m gonna call the police, she says ‘do it.’ The superintendent doesn’t want her here. We actually had to put them [the board] in a room, we just brought them back out now.”
After Snelling guides Ocasio and Police Officer Frank Rodriguez to Pecot, she declines to leave, stating she is a constituent and a parent who was just sitting in the audience.
Shortly thereafter, Board Vice President Dejon Morris says on the microphone that Pecot can be arrested for defiant trespass if she declines to leave on her own accord.
“You’re gonna drive away a mother with children, disabled children, do you understand what’s happening here? You don’t understand what’s happening here and you’re doing something very wrong right now and it’s going to look really bad for the police department,” Pecot tells Ocasio and Rodriguez.
” … I’m not doing anything, I’m exercising my right to be here as a constituent.”
Ocasio says they have every right to ask her to leave the property, to which Snelling said he asked her to leave for being disruptive and she didn’t listen.
” … They lie to us, and we defend our children, we’re defending our children. I was just sitting here and they were talking. I’ve literally said nothing since,” Pecot declared.
Ultimately, she was handcuffed and walked out of the meeting, yelling “pendeja,” Spanish for “***hole,” as she’s being walked out, also claiming her free speech was violated as other parents expressed their outrage about what had transpired.
As she is being transported to central booking for processing, Pecot continued to express frustration to police.
“We’re calling them all out, it’s all we’re doing: They don’t want to take the heat because they know they’re doing the wrong thing by out children,” she tells Rodriguez while inside a police car.
The police body camera footage was obtained by this reporter via an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request.
Cell phone video of the incident, first published by HCV, went viral and four city electeds, including Mayor James Solomon, spoke out against Pecot being arrested.
The police report of the arrest lists Board Vice President Dejon Morris as the complainant and Snelling is also listed as requesting for the arrest, as HCV first reported.
While Board President Noemi Velazquez said at the end of last month that the board would look into potentially dropping the case against Pecot, Morris said at a town hall last week that was not possible since the matter was no longer in the BOE’s hands.
