A Louisville school police officer has been arrested after detectives say surveillance cameras caught him punching a teen at school and placing another in a choke-hold.
Prison Planet reports: Officer Jonathan Hardin faces charges of assault, wanton endangerment, official misconduct and false swearing after it emerged that on multiple separate occasions he used extreme excessive physical force on students at Olmstead Academy North Middle School.
According to court documents, the surveillance footage shows Hardin lifting a 13-year-old child into the air with a chokehold, then dropping the student to the ground, resulting in what a doctor has described as “an injury to the brain” due to loss of blood flow.
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The court documents also note that as the boy laid unconscious on the ground, the officer did not call for medical help, opting instead to handcuff the child and isolate him for the entire day.
Eventually, Hardin drove the boy home, without informing the parents about the incident. The doctor, Bill Smock, reported that the boy was lucky to be alive, noting that Hardin’s conduct “manifested an extreme indifference to the value of human life, caused serious physical injury to the child and wantonly created a grave risk of death to the victim.”
In another incident, just five days earlier, Hardin was reported to have punched another 13-year-old full in the face because he had reason to believe that the student had cut in line at the cafeteria.
The court documents note that following the assault, which resulted in lacerations to the inside of the mouth and swelling to the child’s face, Hardin charged the student with menacing and resisting arrest. Police have confirmed that there was no probable cause for Hardin’s actions in this instance.
