CCSD approves $1M settlement over Durango High incident

The Clark County School Board approved a settlement of $1 million to two families over a 2023 incident in which a school police officer pulled a student to the ground near Durango High School.

Video posted on social media, and later released as body camera footage, captured the February 2023 altercation near the Las Vegas high school in which Clark County School District Police Department Lt. Jason Elfberg grabbed a Black student, brought him to the ground next to a police vehicle and placed a knee on his back.

The incident sparked outrage from members of the community, including a protest outside the district’s administrative center.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada announced it would represent two students involved in the altercation. In April 2023, the organization filed a lawsuit against the school district seeking the release of body camera footage and other records related to the confrontation. District Judge Danielle Chio ordered the district to release body camera footage in December 2023.

Thursday’s unanimous vote to approve the settlement, the ACLU said, avoids an additional civil rights case being brought on behalf of the students.

“Two years and dozens of motions and hearings later, we’ve firmly established that CCSD’s original narrative in this matter was a bold-faced lie and that its attempt to hide records was done intentionally to hide the egregious misconduct of its own police department from the public,” ACLU of Nevada Executive Director Athar Haseebullah said in a statement after the vote.

CCSD police did not respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.